The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)

by Olivie Blake

Many people incorrectly assume time to be a steady incline, a measured arc of growth and progress, but when history is written by the victors the narrative can often misrepresent that shape.

Beware the man who faces you unarmed. If in his eyes you are not the target, then you can be sure you are the weapon.

It was the last day Libby Rhodes would ever set eyes on Nico de Varona,

I bet its not lol

“Oh, I believe he’s filling in the blanks with something his mind considers reasonable,” Atlas said, and Libby felt herself pale a little, not overly enthralled about what that might be.

“I know what people want to hear. You make them want to hear what you know.”

“You’ve really got to work on your self-esteem, Rhodes. Self-deprecation went out as a fashionable personality trait at least five years ago.”

Always dangerous was the pairing of hunger with any skill of manipulation; it is an essential law of human behavior that when given the tools to do so, those born at the bottom will always try to claw their way to the top. Those born at the top, i.e., Callum, were usually less inclined to upend things as they were.

A self-perpetuating cycle, really, that knowledge begets knowledge just as power begets power—generationally, institutionally.

“Yes, it’s very much akin to the British Museum,” confirmed Dalton dismissively, leading them up the stairs, “in that every relic from every culture is rather forcibly housed under one monarchical roof.

“Because the problem with knowledge, Miss Rhodes, is its inexhaustible craving. The more of it you have, the less you feel you know,” said Atlas. “Thus, men often go mad in search of it.”

emotions are far stronger and harder to conceal. And, unlike thought, emotion can be easily manipulated. Thoughts, on the other hand, must be implanted or incepted or stolen,

they were binary stars, trapped in each other’s gravitational field and easily diminished without the other’s opposing force.

“You know why you don’t understand me?” Parisa answered Reina’s thoughts, stepping closer to lower her voice. “Because you think you’ve figured me out. You think you’ve met me before, other versions of women like me, but you have no idea what I am. You think my looks are what make me? My ambitions? You can’t begin to know the sum of my parts, and you can stare all you like, but you won’t see a damn thing until I show you.”

“Don’t envy me, Reina,” Parisa advised softly, turning to say it in Reina’s ear. “Fear me.”

They will have to kill you to keep themselves alive.

Knew soneobe would have to die

He’s presenting you with his reality, thinking his candor will appeal to you,

Gaslighting him.. Interesting

“Because even if you don’t trust him, you believe him. He is influencing your perception by confirming everything you already believe to be true. He’s planting things in you, and I worry.”

Nico resented himself most when he made her feel small.

The world was filled with poets who thought a woman’s love had unmade them.

“A flaw of humanity,” said Parisa, shrugging as they walked. “The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness.”

“Men in particular are draining, they bleed us dry. They demand we carry their burdens, fix their ills. A man is constantly in search of a good woman, but what do they offer us in return?”

Preach

“You,” he said, “would not understand.” “I’m sure I could if you used small words,” she drolly replied.

Ugh love the sass

Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else.

Libby Rhodes was an anxious impending meltdown whose decisions were based entirely on what she had allowed the world to shape her into. She was more powerful than all of them except for Nico, and of course she was. Because that was her curse: regardless of how much power she possessed, she lacked the dauntlessness to misuse it. She was too small-minded, too un-hungry for that. Too trapped within the cage of her own fears, her desires to be liked. The day she woke up and realized she could make her own world would be a dangerous one, but it was so unlikely it hardly kept Callum up at night.

She reninds me so much of myself and the way my own fears prevent me from having all the things i could want.

“Theoretically, men are a disaster. As a concept, I unequivocally reject them.”

The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.”

Stop it