Darkdawn (The Nevernight Chronicle, #3)

by Jay Kristoff

I am the war you cannot win.

“So you lie to us?” “Sometimes.” Butcher shrugged. “We think if we try hard enough, we can somehow keep you the way you start out. Pure and perfect. Forever.” “So you lie to yourselves, too.”

“They don’t tell stories about Red Church disciples, Chronicler,” Mia had said. “No songs sung for us. No ballads or poems. People live and die in the shadows, here.” “Well, maybe here’s not where you’re supposed to be.”

“Everybody dies sometime. Very few of us die for something.

How easily a parent can make a triumph of their children, gentlefriends. And how easily they can make a ruin.

You never know what can break you until you’re falling apart.

Fear was a poison. Fear was a prison. Fear was the bridesmaid of regret, the butcher of ambition, the bleak forever between forward and backward. Fear was Can’t. Fear was Won’t. But fear wasn’t ever a choice. To never fear was to never hope. Never love. Never live. To never fear the dark was to never smile as the dawn kissed your face. To never fear solitude was to never know the joy of a beauty in your arms. Part of having is the fear of losing. Part of creating is the fear of it breaking. Part of beginning is the fear of your ending. Fear is never a choice. Never a choice. But letting it rule you is.

Because to be alive was ever in some way to be afraid.