More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Behavior is not just observed within the person; it’s observed in the echo of their actions, in the delivery of their violence.
We should see it for the gruesome deed it is, for the truth of its existence. Sometimes, evil things just are.
Most obsessions start small, harmless. A tiny niggle in the back of your mind, an innocent fixation. The obsessive thought crawls under our skin and we begin to pick and pick until the desire overwhelms and we have no choice but to tear into it, claws raking and drawing blood. The wound is a form of relief.
Good and evil do not inherently exist within matter. It’s the person, the consciousness, who decides whether or not a deed will serve as either.
The devil is in the details, and the details are inside that devil’s head.
“The mind is the most powerful force in the known universe,” he says. “This, at least, we can all agree on. If the mind believes a thing to be true, then the mind makes it true. And a brilliant mind can be the worst affliction.”
But for her—to get what I need—I have to behave like a good dog. No biting. No scratching. No marking my territory. And definitely no humping.
Pen poised over the page, I glance up at her. “I wonder which one of us is the devil, and which one is selling our soul?” She shakes the loose waves of hair from her face. “You first have to have a soul to sell.”
“Pack lightly, Kallum. Your ego will need the room.”
“The alchemy of the soul is transforming pain into creative genius.”
“The sigils are neither names of demons nor angels. They’re neither good nor evil. The psyche is more powerful than any manmade deity, and the unconscious can be invoked to obtain our most coveted desires.”
“There are two histories,” I say to her, leashing the terrible compulsion. “Public knowledge passed down through the generations, and secret knowledge passed down to the elite few.”
“They taught us that the stars are composed of an unearthly matter, that this spiritual element of the mind, the psyche, consists of this mystical material. Hence, the reason why the stars govern our lives.”
“You approached me to glean information on the case,” she says, her accusation all logic. I run a hand over my mouth, stalling. “I approached you because I was curious about you. Because your hypnotic eyes and your goddamn perfect, alluring body punched me in the gut, and I’ve never felt such sweet pain.”
“You sound like a pixie when you laugh. It’s fucking adorable.”
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it they don’t become one,” he says, paraphrasing Nietzsche’s infamous line. “But in my little Halen’s case, I think you crave the touch of the monster as badly as the fight.”
“The occult can delve into magick, Witchcraft, Wicca,” she continues, “or it can even explore Satanism. However, it’s man who’s flawed. Man can take any spiritual concept, any higher wisdom intended to enlighten, and in his selfish vanity, greed, and desire for power, corrupt absolutely.
It’s the lovely bad things that steal into our thoughts in the middle of the night and tempt us across the line between good and evil. Those torturously beautiful sins that provoke our deepest, most deviant desires. It feeds us in the dark, stoking a frail flame into an inferno we can no longer resist.
“There has never been any act between us, little Halen. That is real. Everything between us…nothing has ever been more real.”
“We all have a vague recollection of our end, but how many of us truly face our mortality on a candid level where, once we know—once it infects our entire state of being—we cannot simply return to life as we once were.”
acceptance of our demise is not a strength. Overcoming fear of death is not courage. It is not looking the monster in the eye and overpowering our fate with bloated ego to immortalize ourselves. True strength is having the fraught will and calm surrender to accept our heartsickness, to awake every day and feel our pain, embrace our suffering, and choose to live in spite of our great losses.
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” he whispers over my mouth. I swallow the forming ache. “You are the bad thing.”
The mind is the most powerful form of sorcery in this world.
