Why did we have more than we knew what to do with, while they had less than they needed to stay alive?
I didn’t want to kill the hollow any more than I wanted to kill a strange animal. In the course of leading this creature around by the nose, I had gotten close enough to understand that there was more than just void inside it. There was a tiny spark, a little marble of soul at the bottom of a deep pool. It wasn’t hollow – not really.
She had a heart the size of France and the lucky few whom she loved, she loved with every square inch of it. But it’s size made it dangerous.
I told him I had another statement to make and then held up my middle finger and walked out.
I was moved by this new idea of my grandfather, not as a paranoiac gun nut or a secretive philanderer or a man who wasn’t there for his family, but as a wandering knight who risked his life for others, living out of cars and cheap motels, stalking lethal shadows, coming home shy a few bullets and marked with bruises he could never quite explain and nightmares he couldn’t talk about. For his many sacrifice he received only scorn and suspicion from those he loved.
So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret. Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.
Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead?
Travel is crucial to one’s development,” said Miss Peregrine, her tone strangely defensive. “Until they have traveled, even the most educated person is ignorant.
Because, I thought, a line from Tolkien materializing in my head, one does not simply walk into Mordor.
Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone?
The adolescent phase is rarely attractive, whatever the species.
And I knew that the minute I got cocky – the minute I stopped being pants-wettingly terrified of hollowgast – something terrible would happen.
I felt even more cheated when I realized that most of Grandpa Portman’s best stories couldn’t possibly be true. The tallest tales were always about his childhood, like how he was born in Poland but at twelve had been shipped off to a children’s home in Wales. When I would ask why he had to leave his parents, his answer was always the same: because the monsters were after him. Poland was simply rotten with them, he said.
I needed all of it. Both families, both families, both Jacobs – all of Emma. I knew I would have to chose, and I was afraid it would split me in half.
Survive, yes – but at what cost?
The bridge was hollow, and a hollow was inside the bridge.
I was born on Halloween, and until I was eight years old my parents had me convinced that the candy people gave out when I knocked on their doors was birthday presents.
I wanted to tell her then that I loved her. I thought that might help, by grounding us in something we were sure about rather than everything we weren’t.
Miracle. Curse. I hadn’t quite worked out the difference.
The letters were worth the risk, though, and I came to enjoy communicating by hand. There was something sweet about holding a tangible thing that had been touched and marked upon by someone I loved.