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The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.
March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.
“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
Blink, and the years fall away like leaves.
Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
but life’s a bitch with a crooked sense of humor—’cause
He laughs, a little nervously—a habit he’s beginning to think he’ll never shake.
Everyone has their fallen foes, their battle scars.
Henry wonders, as they wait in the queue, if some people have natural style, or if they simply have the discipline to curate themselves every day.
“It is a crime,” he says, “that women are not taught the same as men. Why, a world without reading, I cannot fathom it. A whole long life without poems, or plays, or philosophers.
she begins to wonder at the importance of a name at all. The very idea will begin to lose its meaning, the way a word does when said too many times, breaking down into useless sounds and syllables.
Food is one of the best things about being alive. Not just food. Good food.
“We all have battle scars,” she says. “People in our past.”
Weed made space in his skull, eased the nervous terror in his heart. But he couldn’t control the places it took his head. Valium and Xanax were better, dulling everything at once, but he’s always stayed away from the harder stuff, out of fear—not the fear that something would go wrong. Just the opposite: the fear it would feel right. The fear of the slip, the slide, of knowing he wouldn’t be strong enough to stop. It’s never been the high he craved, anyway, not exactly. It’s just the quiet. That happy side effect.
Two years of a life together, replaced by a life apart, and there will always be an empty space in the shape of her.
That he’d blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.
How does a ceiling bring you closer to heaven? If God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?
It is harder to manage, when the impossible is so obvious. Your mind can’t make sense of it, so you try again and again and again, convinced that this time, it will be different. This, she knows, is how you go mad.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Eighteen is old enough to vote, twenty-one is old enough to drink, but thirty is old enough to make decisions.”
Humans are capable of such wondrous things. Of cruelty, and war, but also art and invention.
Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vecu.
But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much.
That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one. And so they
