The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Your credulity is as vast as this desert. One might get lost in it and never again encounter fact or reason.
My life is blood because my world is beasts.
I almost never like people, even in tiny doses. But I never get tired of being with you.
Everything else in Lazlo’s mind took a step back to clear space for this new intelligence.
He had a trio of fears that sat in his gut like swallowed teeth, and when he was too quiet with his own thoughts, they’d grind together to gnaw at him from within.
Nerve thrum and screaming blood, wild and churning and chasing and devouring and terrible and terrible and terrible –.
Lazlo had loved Sarai as a dream, and he would love her as a ghost as well.
He drifted about with his head full of myths, always at least half lost in some otherland of story. Demons and wingsmiths, seraphim and spirits, he loved it all. He believed in magic, like a child, and in ghosts, like a peasant. His nose was broken by a falling volume of fairy tales on his fist day on the job, and that they said, told you everything you needed to know about Lazlo Strange: head in the clouds, world of his own, fairy tales and fancy.
Because hope comes from in you, and wishes are just magic. Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes it’s own magic.
Her soul felt alive more than ever before. Sarai almost forget that she wasn’t.
It was only an illusion, but a perfect illusion.
Infinities are not for casual exploration.
She thought Zuzana’s tininess was perfect, like a fairy you found in the woods and wanted to put in your pocket. Though in Zuzana’s case the fairy was likely to be rabid, and bite.
The moon on a bracelet and the sun in a jar... We really wreak havoc on the heavens, don’t we?
Dead souls dream only of death... Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is. Look at you. You are a lord of ashes, a lord of char. You are filthy with your victory.
Drawing had always been how she processed things. Once they were on paper they were hers, and she could decide what power they would hold over her.
Karou had certainly learned that “possible” and “impossible” were rough categories at best.
The riddle is: How might a war end? Annihilation is one way. Joram’s way. He did this, not you. You dreamed a different way. Akiva, too. You, the pair of you, you had the capacity not to hate. The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?
They hated the humans, but they also wanted to be them. They wanted to punish them, and they wanted to be embraced by them. To be accepted, honored, loved, like someone’s child.
She looked across the street at herself – as seen, remembered, and conjured by the dreamer – and she didn’t see obscenity, or calamity, or godspawn. She saw a proud, smiling girl with beautiful blue skin. Because that was what he saw, and this was his mind.