Ceno’s brain, soft and pink with blood – and veined with endless whorls and branches of sapphire threaded through every synapse and neuron, inextricable, snarled, intricate, terrible, fragile and new.
Just tell yourself a story that’ll satisfy you and pretend he told it.
When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.
You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.
Funny how “question” contains the word “quest” inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.
But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.
She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.
Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.
She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.
A library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.
That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.
Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.
A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world.
She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not always make herself raise her hand.
September had never been betrayed before. She did not even know what to call the feeling in her chest, so bitter and sour. Poor child. There is always a first time, and it is never the last time.
I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.
I savor bitterness – it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.
You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.
Death hath no dominion.