01UndatedLiraz snorted, caught off guard, and the tension between them ebbed away. "I'm sorry of my almost dying interrupted your almost kissing.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
02UndatedBe an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It's who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books. Finish them, then make them better. Find the way. No one will make this dream come true for you but you.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
03UndatedThe dead," she said. "And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you'd think they were corpses handing on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements." ... "they're gone, they can't be hurt anymore, but we drag their memory around with us, doing our worst in their name, like it's what they'd want, for us to avenge them?Laini Taylor / quote ↗
04UndatedBeautiful men and women with distorted shadows came and scorched their handprints onto doors before vanishing skyward, drafts of heat billowing behind them with the whumph of unseen wings. Here and there, feathers fell, and they were like tufts of white fire, disintegrating to ash as soon as they touched the ground.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
05UndatedHis lips made a grim twist that was like the joyless cousin of a smile.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
06UndatedAnd... a bed. A bed and a blanket to cover them, a blanket that was theirs together.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
07UndatedThe eye’s perception of texture is pale compared to the lips’, and I didn’t know what velvety was until I knew it with my lips. Oh, kissing. Oh, violin boy.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
08UndatedPapilio stomachus: fragile creatures, vulnerable to forst and betrayal.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
12UndatedHis hope was like an intake of icy air—it hurt—and just as sharp and sudden was his jealousy. In an instant he was hot and cold with it, his hands clenching into fists so tight they burned. A flare of adrenaline coursed through him and left him shaking, and it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her, and for the fleeting flash of an instant, he felt relief. Followed by crushing disappointment and self-loathing for what his reaction had been.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
13UndatedThere was a man who loved the moon, but whenever he tried to embrace her, she broke into a thousand pieces and left him drenched, with empty arms.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
14UndatedIt was cruel. Like opening a birdcage to let the bird fly out, whilst all the while it's tethered by the leg, and freedom is only an illusion.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
16UndatedAnd if redemption was self-serving, coming as it did ribbon-tied to what he wanted most in life? For once, Akiva's shame wouldn't rise to the bait. He wanted what he'd always wanted, and he'd better just say it, his own worries and fears be damned.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
17UndatedI feel liquefied, like a cucumber forgotten in the crisper drawer, and I want to hold myself at arm's length and carry me to the trash. Who is this sack of slush masquerading as me? It's intolerable.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
18UndatedIt's like all my life I've been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I'm not a tower at all. I'm a lighthouse. It's like waking up. I am incandescent.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
19UndatedIt didn't matter; by now she knew she loved him in any skin. In her book there was another tale - one of the original eighteen - of a dragon who had a human wife, and Neve had never understood it before, at least from the wifes point of view. Love was love. But she hoped that he was not a dragon.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
20UndatedThere are boys you look at and want to touch with your mouth, and there are boys you look at and want to wear one of those surgical masks everyone in China had during bird flu. There are a lot more bird-flu boys at large.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
21UndatedDid you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?... Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that?Laini Taylor / quote ↗
22UndatedMy phone buzzes. It’s from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won’t be needing. —a) Hi. I’m Zuzana. I’m actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way I can gain a soul is if a human falls in love with me. Help a puppet out? —b) Hi. I’m Zuzana. The touch of my lips imparts immortality. Just sayin’. —c) Hi. I’m Zuzana. I think I might like you.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
23UndatedThe dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
24UndatedIt is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry ‘Monster!’ and looked behind himLaini Taylor / quote ↗
