It’s a brave new world, Mr. Portman, And we’ll be right behind you.
She pressed the knife harder against my throat, her hand shaking. She was scared – which meant she was dangerous.
You’re getting overwhelmed,” said Emma. “Big tasks always seem that way if you try and figure out every little piece of them beforehand. We have to take it bit by bit.
Claire mumbled into Bronwyn’s lap, “Tell us a story, Wyn. I’m scared and I don’t like this at all and I think I’d like to hear a story instead.
Through a bombed cemetery, long-forgotten Londoners unearthed and flung into trees, grinning in rotted formal wear. A curlicued swing set in a cratered playground. The horrors piled up, incomprehensible, the bombers now and then dropping flares to light it all with the pure, shining white of a thousand camera flashes. As if to say: Look. Look what we made.
My brother was an opportunist above all else,” she said. “I think part of him did want to do the right thing, and when he helped you and Miss Bloom, he did so genuinely. But all along he’d been making preparations to betray us, in case that turned out to be advantageous for him. And when I told him where to stuff it, he decided that it was.
No one here is embarrassed of their gift.
He closed the laptop. A sure sign I was about to receive his full attention.
They had a million questions for me, and, far away from Miss Peregrine, I could answer them frankly. What was my world like? What did people eat, drink, wear? When would sickness and death be overcome by science?
They were orphans of war, washed up on that little island in a tide of blood.
There are peculiars all over the world,” she said, “though our numbers are much diminished from what they once were. Those who remain live in hiding, as we do.
The bird only keeps good things about the future to herself, but you can bet we hear all the brown-trouser bits.
But the way she looked at me. Just that crooked bit of smile gave me a surge, and I felt I could do anything.
My brothers taught me a hard lesson. No one can hurt you as badly as the people you love.
He was military-trained, dummy. A stone-cold badass. He had a walk-in closet full of sawed-off shotguns. The man was Rambo compared to you.
There was something almost regal about him, I thought; a defiance I admired. He was a holdout who refused to give up his post. The last watchman at the end of the world.
What you are is three-quarters stupid.
Dogs can’t speak English. Nor any human language – save, in one notable exception, Luxembourgish, which is only comprehensible to bankers and Luxembourgers, and therefore hardly of any use at all. No, you’ve eaten something disagreeable and are having a nightmare, that’s all.
As he always says, the day there’s no time for manners, the world’s lost to us anyway.
Oh, lovely. Improvised suicide.