A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning, #2)

by Ava Reid

How strange it is, to live so long in the company of shadows that, without them, one feels bereft and needful of the dark.

Thinking of her was always like this: a rush of fondness, and then a bolt of fear. Love poems never seemed to include this thread of terror. Was he uniquely ill-disposed to this sentiment, too uneasy, too anxious for the act of loving without reserve? Or was the object of his affection uniquely vulnerable?

“Be careful with that, Héloury. You may find yourself worshipping blindly at the altar of reason, just as the pious worship at the altar of their saints.”

I had not known that the seam of the world was not between the living and the dead, but rather between the real and the unknown.

“Small-minded traditionalists always reject what they don’t understand.”

All precious things shatter, if they are found too soon,’”

What a ruthless privilege it was, he thought, to love.

Let no one say that I am weak. I am fearful, and therefore brave. I am wounded, yet all the stronger for it.

If you can learn to love that which despises you, that which terrifies you, you can dance on the shore and play in the waves again, like you did when you were young. Before the ocean is friend or foe, it simply is. And so are you.