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I owed you more trust than I gave you. I shouldn’t have destroyed what I didn’t understand, and I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
I think part of me knew all along that you were working on something that could be dangerous, and I thought that being a good friend meant not judging or asking too many questions. And that was messed up, and I should have tried to find out sooner, and when I saw the machine in Denver and realized that it was yours I should have found a way to talk to you about it instead of just finishing the mission. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”
Lack of curiosity: failure of love.
But the really great magicians can’t be around people at all. They’re like Ernesto, who can’t leave his two rooms. Or poor Dorothea, who couldn’t carry on a simple conversation. Or my old teacher Kanot, whose face changes every day. Set apart. Like they can do things to people, but not with people.”
his life story was the story of Patricia and him, after all, for better or worse, and if she ended his life might go on, but his story would be over.
“It can’t be too late,” Patricia said, “or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
THIS. Fussing over spilt milk means you're still attached.
“You gave me life, but now you’ve given me something much more valuable. I think we’re going to do amazing things together. This is just the beginning. Carmen and the other witches were right, people need to change. I have spent my entire life studying human interactions at a granular level, and now I can see the nonhuman interactions as well. I think we can empower people. Every human can be a wizard.”
“That’s what history is, really,” Bianca says, “the process for turning idiots into visionaries.”
I don’t think of myself as special. I think of myself as invisible.
There’s more light in her eyes than in the whole wide sky that I grew up underneath.
her voice rings out, like we’re all inside her heart and we can hear it beat.
“If you control our sleep, then you own our dreams,” she says. “And from there, it’s easy to master our whole lives.”
Every time I think I know what’s wrong with me, I find something else.
If they find the food dollars in her pocket, this could be the end of her bright future. She could do so much for this city, for all the struggling people. This could crush out the light in her eyes forever. And me? I’m invisible.
The only warm hope in all this frozen nothing is that Bianca is okay. She’ll have the life she deserves, and maybe she’ll end up in a position to change this city. She’ll forget about me, after a while, but maybe some tiny pocket of her heart will preserve my memory, and it’ll inspire her to do something for others. I can die out here, knowing that she’s going to be amazing. I try to tell myself that’s enough, that it’s as good as a whole life by her side.
