Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1)

by Laini Taylor

“Life won’t just happen to you, boy,” he said. “You have to happen to it. Remember: The spirit grows sluggish when you neglect the passions.”

Your spirit shouldn’t be ‘fine.’ It should be effervescent.”

“You call it an open mind to believe men flew down from the skies on fiery wings?” “And women,” said Lazlo. “It’s a woeful species that’s all male.” “More like a nonexistent species,” remarked Calixte. “Men lacking both wombs and good sense.”

The function of hate, as Sarai saw it, was to stamp out compassion—to close a door in one’s own self and forget it was ever there. If you had hate, then you could see suffering—and cause it—and feel nothing except perhaps a sordid vindication.

“Because you needed it,” he said, and his words pulled a silence over them both. Here was the radical notion that you might help someone simply because they needed it.

“No,” he said, smiling. “I think you’re a fairy tale. I think you’re magical, and brave, and exquisite. And…” His voice grew bashful. Only in a dream could he be so bold and speak such words. “I hope you’ll let me be in your story.”

“You must see. I want you in my mind.”

And he wanted her in his arms. He wanted her in his life.