There Are No Saints (Sinners, #1)

by Sophie Lark

I just want to tell you that every part of you, the things that bring you pleasure and the things that bring you pain, the parts of yourself you’re most proud of and the parts that seem like your own worst enemy eating you alive from the inside…it all makes up your mind, and your mind is beautiful and perfect, because it’s the only one like it. You are irreplaceable. You are one of a kind. You are art.

My life with my mother was chaotic and miserable, but I saw beautiful things created all around me. It gave me hope that loveliness could bloom out of ugliness and scarcity.

He unnerves me, and I don’t fucking trust him. I don’t know what his intentions are, but experience has taught me that when a man takes a special interest in me, it’s never fucking good.

And yet . . . not all of us were drawn to Prince Charming. Some little girls ate up the stories of ball gowns and castles and knights who slayed the dragon . . . While some little girls read the stories of a dark pathway into the woods . . . a twisted mansion with black windows and fog covering the grounds . . . That’s where we wanted to go. No matter what we might find inside

“Loving someone gives them power over you,” Cole says. When we talk like this, I feel like he really is the devil,

When people show you who they are . . . believe them.

“You’re a slave to what you love. The things you hate repulse you,”

“I don’t want to be taken care of,” she says. “I want to be seen.”

Could the pleasure of intimacy outweigh the danger? This is a question perched on a cliff. No peering over—I’ll only find the bottom by jumping.

This is what gives us power: we always have a choice.”