The Butterfly Garden (The Collector, #1)

by Dot Hutchison

“So a rose by any other name isn’t still a rose?”

Romeo and Juliet reference

Beauty loses its meaning when you’re surrounded by too much of it.

Justice is a faulty thing at the best of times, and it doesn’t actually fix anything.”

Like beauty, desperation and fear were as common as breathing.

“Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.”

The only thing that made me truly different was that I was the only one who never cried.

“My secrets are old friends; I would feel like a poor friend if I abandoned them now.”

Sometimes the illusion of freedom, of choice, was more painful than captivity.

Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Real butterflies could fly away, out of reach. The Gardener’s Butterflies could only ever fall, and that but rarely.

“Those who want to believe something badly enough generally do,” she says simply.

Three butterflies for a broken girl: one for personality, one for possession, and one for pettiness.

“Collectors don’t let butterflies fly free. It defeats the purpose.”

“Even when it’s just a swift embrace and a stolen whisper, you share things with each other in those moments.

Cowardice may be our natural state but it’s still a choice.

“I think a trauma doesn’t stop just because you’ve been rescued.”