The Chemist

by Stephenie Meyer

She also should have respected the power of pure stupidity to take a smart person completely by surprise.

A person who will sell out his partner always sees the partner as plotting in exactly the same way. Dishonest people don’t believe honest people exist.”

She felt the deepest revulsion for the kind of person who was born to the freedom and privilege of a democratic nation and then used that very privilege and freedom to attack its source.

Because what was better for destabilization than a deadly, laboratory-created influenza virus? Especially one you could control.

He’d deliberately downplayed the disaster so that it would sound more realistic. Sometimes the truth was worse than fiction.

We build up these ideas of people, create the one we want to be with, and then try to keep the real person inside the false mold. It doesn’t always work out well.”

Preparation felt like a magic spell sometimes. Like you could force events into the shape you wanted just by planning them thoroughly enough.

Daniel nodded. “Well, I don’t feel like laughing anymore.” “We probably needed the release. Now we can get back to our regularly scheduled depression.”

As someone who knew better than most the kind of darkness that went on behind the scenes and how little any of the important decisions had to do with the figurehead spokesperson the people elected, it was hard for her to care much about left or right.

I am the bogeyman in a very dark and scary world. I frighten people who aren’t afraid of anything else, not even death. I can take everything they pride themselves on away from them; I can make them betray everything they hold sacred. I am the monster they see in their nightmares.”

“I see a woman who is more… real than any other woman I’ve ever met. You make every other person I’ve known seem insubstantial, somehow incomplete. Like shadows and illusions. I loved my wife, or rather—as you so insightfully pointed out while I was high—I loved my idea of who she was. I truly did. But she was never as there to me as you are. I’ve never been drawn to someone the way I am to you, and I have been from the very first moment I met you. It’s like the difference between… between reading about gravity and then falling for the first time.”

“This is entirely irrational on every level,” she whispered. “Don’t kill me, please?” She might have nodded.

It was like her first kiss, because no kiss had ever been so vivid, so much stronger than her own analytical mind. She didn’t have to think. It felt amazing not to think.

“It feels like I’ve been waiting a century to do that. It’s like time has lost all continuity. Every second with you outweighs days of life before I met you.”

Trying to understand a normal person was not her forte. Though, truly, someone who found the real Alex attractive was not a normal person at all.

“I guess it’s better to mention this casually over the phone—by the way, Kev, I’ve fallen in love with Alex—than in person, right?”

the best thing about obsessive-compulsive disorder was the cozy high you got from a tidy space.

She sighed. How could she see clearly? Her emotions had tangled this whole situation into a knot of Gordian complexity.

“I never want to go back to having nothing to lose. I’m glad I have you as my liability. I’m grateful. I’d have you as anything.”

Alex couldn’t even remember what she’d been holding on to back then. This was the kind of life worth fighting to keep.

I want you to know—this time with you has been extraordinary. There has been terror, yes, but along with it, there’s been a kind of joy I didn’t know existed. And it’s because you are extraordinary. I’m so glad you found me. My life was destined to change drastically, it seems, in one way or another. I’m just so grateful that it got to be with you.”

Sometimes you cling to a mistake simply because it took so long to make.”

Val laughed. “You take things very seriously.” “People try to kill me a lot.” “That must get irritating,” she said casually.

“None of that!” Kevin commanded, though he still had his back to them. “What?” Daniel complained. “I can feel you two silently communicating. Stop it.”

If I can, I’ll call you from a pay phone.”

Those still exist?