The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

You couldn’t get around rules if you didn’t know them.

That was the thing about games: Sometimes you lost.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” Xander quoted, wiggling his eyebrows—one of which had only just started to grow back after an experiment gone wrong. “And anything done well can be done better.” Why would a Hawthorne settle for better, a voice whispered in the back of Grayson’s mind, when they could be the best?

There was something about rooftops. It wasn’t just being high up or the way it felt to go right up to the edge. It was seeing everything but being alone.

“Nothing matters unless you let it.”

Never question your own authority and no one else will, either.

There was a difference between telling people what you wanted and making it clear that it was in their best interest to give it to you. Explicit threats were for people who needed to assert their power. Never assert what you can assume, Grayson.

Most people considered power and weakness opposites, but Grayson had learned early in life that the real opposite of weakness was control.

“When words are real enough, when they’re the exact right words, when what you’re saying matters, when it’s beautiful and perfect and true—it hurts.”

“Some of us exist just a little too loudly for the comfort of those who would prefer we did not exist at all.”

Grayson knew that every problem had solutions, plural. Falling into the trap of assuming there was only one could keep you from seeing the optimal combination. Complex problems were fluid, dynamic.

Only show surprise if it’s to your advantage to do so.

Grayson let his lips curl slightly. “I know.” There was power in those two words. Make them wonder what you know.

“Men who have a great deal nearly always want more.”

If you allow people to fail you, he could hear his grandfather lecturing, they inevitably will. So don’t give them the option.

Perfection without artistry is worth very little.”

One thing that Jameson had learned early on about observing the world was to pay attention to blank spaces: pauses in sentences, what wasn’t said, places where crowds should have been gathered but weren’t. A blank face. An opening.

The only thing that could beat survival was a death wish.

there was difference between saying I need and I’ll need. The future tense implied that one expected the need to be met before it became pressing.

But fifty-fifty wasn’t the kind of odds a Hawthorne accepted. Not when there were better odds to be had.