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“Being your friend is like trying to get up close and personal with a natural disaster,” she’d said. “Sure, we have some good times, but we spend half of them covered in blood.
Failure to properly appreciate one of the Firstborn was probably bad for silly things like “continuing to have a pulse.”
“You’re a nerd,” I said, and swatted him in the arm. “You seemed all cool and mysterious back when I was afraid of you, but I’m not afraid of you anymore, and I can see clearly that you are a nerd.” “I never denied it,” he said, and leaned in to kiss me again.
His methods were terrible. His intentions were, in their own way, pure. How did he contain that many contradictions without breaking himself?
“Sometimes the places that should be home aren’t,” he said. “Sometimes there’s no one we can blame for that, and so we blame ourselves, because aren’t we the easiest targets? It’s not like anyone will come to our defense when all the loathing and finger-pointing is happening in the privacy of our own minds.”
that’s the thing about parents: they’re never simple. They’re never straightforward. And try as we might, we can never quite be free of the shadows they cast over us.
People are complicated. That’s the problem with people. It would be so much easier if they could all be put into easy little boxes and left there, never changing, never challenging the things I decided about them.
“All those things were words, and they all left your mouth, but I’m having trouble with the idea that they form any sort of coherent sentence.”
“We are the sum of our actions,” said Simon. “When desperation sets our course, those actions can blacken with remarkable speed.”
The Luidaeg is a sledgehammer in a world of scalpels, and when she gets involved, it leaves a mark.
Some wounds never really heal. They just scab over enough to let you keep on going.
Magic echoes. It does not repeat. Magic is ephemeral. It fades with time, with distance, as other scents and other footsteps blur and rub it away. Even the strongest spells were never intended to last forever. In the mortal world, dawn chips away at magic with every sunrise, erasing it from the world, making space for something new.
She smiled like a throat being slashed, all vigor and violence,
“There was a time when Spanish was the lingua franca of California. America bought this land from the Spaniards, you know, after they had invaded and conquered it. Really, I find it strange that anyone could live here and not speak Spanish. Language is an invasive species. Let it take root in new soil, and you’ll never beat it out, no matter how hard you try.”
we grew up believing we would live forever. Losing her was like losing the moon. Absolutely incomprehensible. The moon can’t simply vanish. It’s easier to forget that it was there in the first place than it is to live with the reality of its absence.”
It’s easier to look for things I can’t see when I can’t see anything at all. Vision just gets in the way.
Because sometimes the best intentions could lead to some very dark places, and once you were there, it could be almost impossible to find your way home again, unless there was someone willing to help you. Unless you could get there and back by the light of a candle.
Sometimes it’s strange to think about how much I’ve left behind in the process of learning who I want to be.
Her skin was smooth as water on a windless day, and her hair was a cascade of curls flowing down her back and over her shoulders, also like the water, but this time after it had been whipped into angry waves. Her eyes were black from side to side, bottomless, cold. Even her clothing had changed, becoming a form-hugging dark blue gown that shaded to white at the bottom, like waves breaking against the beach. We were standing in the presence of the sea witch,
And as imagination bodies forth The form of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes . . . —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I . . . drift, awash in the delicate lace of information, and allow myself to dissolve into the sap, until I am as much idea as identity, and when I come back together, I am refreshed. But I do not sleep.
