N.J. Lysk > N.J.'s Quotes

“The trousers were miles too long, even when Peter cuffed the legs. The socks bagged in the ankles, and the shirt and sweater were equally large. But when Peter finally managed to get the collars to lie right and glanced at the reflection he'd carved out of the dust on James's mirror, a shock went through him.
This was the face which had haunted him all his life, the one he had looked in the eye on the day he left the Darling house for the last time. The hair, messy and short, enthusiastically curling without the weight of his old braid to drag it down. The stubborn chin. The clear, sharp, sullen eyes full of everything he had never been allowed to be.
Peter ran his hands over himself slowly, breathing tentatively, feeling the weight of his chest under his shirt. He had given this body up. He had thought it belonged to Wendy, to the girl he wasn't. He had let his family make him believe that the only way he would ever be a boy was to be born again in a different shape, leaving everything of his body and history behind.
He breathed out and settled in the feeling of being himself, of being something whole.”
― Austin Chant, Peter Darling

“I like you,” his friend said, and it sounded like an admission. It had to be an admission, following what Josh had said about liking men, even as Josh insisted, “I really like you, Ray.”

Even as Ray arched into the soft, feathery kisses Josh was planting down his throat, he realised he wanted to know more. But the words wouldn’t come. He let his eyes flutter closed to focus on the sensation of Josh’s mouth and Josh’s hand sliding up his naked thigh, pulling his shorts down. Whatever else Josh felt or didn’t feel, this was true, he thought. His hands and his mouth and the way he was already hardening again against Ray’s side. He hadn’t asked about himself in particular, himself… before. He didn’t know how.

He knew he was wanted, but he didn’t know how to ask if he was loved.

He didn’t know how to ask if it was him or the omega wolf. But that wasn’t the real problem; he could have accepted either answer—painful as it might have been. It was something else that scared him: that maybe Josh couldn’t tell the difference. And that… that Ray couldn’t bear.”
― N.J. Lysk, Alpha for the Pack

“Just thinking about all that blood." I nearly shudder. "Doesn't it make you a bit squeamish?"
"Ladies haven't the luxury of being squeamish about blood," she replies, and Percy and I go fantastically red in unison.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with laquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other's mouth.
A long, slow slide, then a sudden impact.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I swear, you would play the coquette with a well-upholstered sofa."
"First, I would not. And second, how handsome is this sofa?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn't take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very much like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Against the sky, the stars crown him, marking the edges of his silhouette like he is a constellation of himself.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“In the east," she says after a time, her gaze still downcast, "there is a tradition known as kintsukuroi. It is the practice of mending broken ceramic pottery using lacquer dusted with gold and silver and other precious metals. It is meant to symbolize that things can be more beautiful for having been broken."
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.
At last she looks at me. Her irises are polished obsidian in the moonlight. "Because I want you to know," she says, "that there is life after survival.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“He pressed his thumbs against Iesu's hipbones, caressing the underside of his dick with his tongue and swallowing the salty, sticky precome. He couldn't say he enjoyed the taste, exactly, but... he glanced up, right past Iesu's heaving chest—shirt sticking to his perky nipples—and at his upturned chin where he'd left his whole throat exposed. Vulnerable and at his mercy.

And blowing a guy was supposed to be submissive.”
― N.J. Lysk, Simpler than Most

“I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“My mother calls it 'the black tax.' Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bring everyone behind you back up from zero.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited. The highest rung of what's possible is far beyond the world you can see. My mother showed me what was possible. The thing that always amazed me about her life is that one showed her. No one showed her. She did on her own. She found her way through sheer force of will.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Another barbecue?” Sorina asked walking in. She was carrying a tray so big Irina didn’t see how she’d fit it on the table. She looked way bigger than she’d been the last time Irina had seen her too.
“Whoa, how many people are you feeding?” she asked, rushing towards the table to make room.
“People?” Sorina replied. “I think you mean wolves.”
― N.J. Lysk, Betas Aside

“...people are no longer interested in analysis. They all prefer catharsis now. They all prefer to say that they are helpless and can’t change other people, i.e. the world. Marxism has been replaced by postmodernism. Psychoanalysis has been replaced by twelve-step programs. It was the end of the content.”
― Sarah Schulman, Empathy

“It takes two to tango” isn’t even true on the dance floor. One person can do a lot of evil all on his or her own. But the Theory of Mutual Blame arose sometime before Doc was even born. Perhaps it was a takeoff on Freud’s seduction theory or the more generic practice of blaming victims for being alive. Its origins were unclear, but no one had ever had to take full responsibility for their own actions since.”
― Sarah Schulman, Empathy

“Sometimes you couldn’t do much to change the fucked up circumstances, but even then everyone had to eat and drink. At least they were lucky enough they could afford the treats and the comfort—it hadn’t always been the case for Marisa and Ray.
They’d never gone hungry—the pack wouldn’t have allowed it—but they’d grown up knowing money was short, learned not to ask for the newest toys or fancy clothes. They’d learned it and they’d taught it, and maybe that was the hardest part of all—not just to say no once or twice, but to explain to a child that there were certain things that others had that were out of your family’s reach.”
― N.J. Lysk, Betas Aside

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“To run with the wolf was to run in the shadows, the dark ray of life, survival and instinct. A fierceness that was both proud and lonely, a tearing, a howling, a hunger and thirst. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. A strength that would die fighting, kicking, screaming, that wouldn't stop until the last breath had been wrung from its body. The will to take one's place in the world. To say 'I am here.' To say 'I am.”
― O. R. Melling

“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

“Words were different when they lived inside of you.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“I’m in the middle of a sentence when he grunts in displeasure, but I force myself to set my book down and turn to him. Dzyer gives me a nod and asks if Lambians really prohibit royal women from touching forged steel for fear of them contaminating themselves? I explain that they don’t really speak of it, then recall that I got a few weird looks for carrying a weapon. Of course, early on I also got looks for wearing what Lambians consider ‘masculine’ clothing and forgetting that in their language verbs are conjugated differently depending the sex of the speaker and the person referred to. Efficient, one would think, to know something about who is performing an action but confusing because the action itself does not change.”
― N.J. Lysk, The Realm of the Impossible

“I never even understood why I needed to shift to learn to swordfight. But the fight earlier has ensured that I am now very aware of how very little command I have of that body and therefore; how underprepared I am for any physical confrontation.
It is for this very reason the royal line is made of shifters: we are meant to be the woman with the strength of mind and the man with the strength of body in one person. The perfect balance that might never be defeated. Except that for all we do not need choose one over the other, everybody else does and since the mind is undoubtedly superior, so is the female form that allows its greater expression. Because their strength must be beyond question, queens are meant to show no fear and to have no need of the strength of their bodies.
Or at least, it had been an effective argument when convincing my mother to ignore the traditional physical training. Particularly because Dzyer seemed inclined to be my other half in that arena. Something I had pointed out to Mother with ulterior motives but that I had believed stupidly and wholeheartedly.
But Dzyer is not my half, he is a person in his own right. A person I had not thought to shield from, either in body or in mind.
“That cannot be… healthy,” he tells me. It has clearly never occurred to him to be my half or for me to be his. He is whole and I am in pieces.”
― N.J. Lysk, The Realm of the Impossible

“He didn’t imagine hockey was a very likely career for any of them—they weren’t even playing on skates—but if they could just believe in something... In themselves, a little bit, in the world giving them a chance, in other people being worth getting to know…
If he could, somehow, offer them that much. Or even if all he did was make their week better. Hell, he’d take making their day a little less worse. It’d make him happy too and joy wasn’t something to be squandered.”
― N.J. Lysk, Not Destiny

“Love was time, most of all—the time you gave, the one you were given.”
― N.J. Lysk, Not Destiny