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It was a small, gentle cruelty of life that most people with a true sense of purpose lack the talent to achieve it. The people with talent are far more likely directionless, an odd but unavoidable irony.
(In Atlas Blakely’s experience, the best method for ruining someone’s life is to give them exactly what they want and then politely get out of their way.)
The point is there are no villains in this story, or maybe there are no heroes.
A second chance at something like life, which is of course the beginning of the end, because existence is largely futile.
When an ecosystem dies, nature makes a new one.
I shouldn’t have asked for power when what I really wanted was meaning.
Within every human being is the power to see the world as it is and still be compelled to save it.
One siren to another, she knew the call of an oncoming shipwreck.
“I love doom,” the blond man said, his eyes gone wholly black. “Isn’t it romantic?”
a person who had never encountered a hardship whose pants he could not charm off,
“I like you with a little carnage.”
Actual freedom that looked a lot like a life.
You will always be the most dangerous person in the room.
Because you, Miss Kamali,” Dalton promised her with a flick of his tongue, “are the most dangerous thing in every world, including this one.”
She had always known that desire was temporary, that life was fleeting, that love was a trap.
Because the end of the world would really be much better with some pie.
Because who could be warned of the empire’s fall and still carry on as before?
You didn’t get to choose who hated you, who loved you.
The answer wasn’t to destroy the world. It was to make a new one.
The problem is that it was closest to alchemical—the feeling like you’ve met the person you want to make magic with for the rest of your life.
“life has the capacity to be very long, and all the worst things are pretty much inevitable. So, you know, might as well rob the bank.”
Because in life there are no true villains. No real heroes.
the past is prologue,
The last part was a love story. This one is a cautionary tale.
Libby eyed her own untouched glass with the distinct sense that she was still trying to get a good grade in the conversation,
Libby had been warned about the end of the world before. She was no longer taking such things under advisement.
Because if I was given this much power, I have to let the fucker burn.
There were people capable of being seen and then there was Parisa, who would only ever be looked at.
Isn’t that all maturity is in the end? The gradual acceptance of personal idiocy?
(It was chilly for such an endeavor, but what was life if not a series of irresponsible choices in pursuit of shrieking joy?)
Other lives, other worlds.)
“Didn’t you know he’s the house purveyor of quality wines and sarcastic comments?”
Even when there’s nothing to live for, there’s always your next meal,”
“I will spend my life orbiting yours,” Nico said, and the exhaustion in his voice, she knew it. She understood it. “I consider it a privilege. Does that mean less if we never sleep together? If we never have babies and hold hands, does that have to mean less? You’re in every world I exist in, your fate is my fate, either you follow me or I follow you, it doesn’t matter which and I don’t care. If that’s not love then maybe I don’t understand love, and that’s fine with me—
What you’re willing to accept doesn’t change what I’m willing to give.”
This is the problem with knowledge: its inexhaustible craving. The madness inherent in knowing there is only more to know.
Cosmic significance dictated that light would fade; that something gold could never stay.
He took to luxury so beautifully, wearing it like a summer tan.
Beginnings and endings, stardust and stars.
Life was nothing but giving pieces of yourself away,
It was a pity that so much of power was theater, a play put on for a thousand empty seats.
to love was to feel another’s pain as if it were your own.
“Just because you can see two points does not mean anything exists between them.”
“You have so many years left to feel pain and regret. Try not to get all your trauma from the very first quarter.”
She capitulated to insignificance with a heave of energy, a burst of submission.
You don’t get to choose how you take your final bow.
