Rachel Hehl ♥︎ > Rachel's Quotes

“You do not know me.”
My heart was breaking. I thought I knew, finally, what it meant to be a ghost. It meant speaking your words around a mouth full of loss. It meant grasping into echoes and hoping, praying that the words still meant something.
“I know your soul,” I said, my voice cracking. “Everything else is an ornament.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“The truth,” said Amar, taking a step closer to me, “is that you look neither lovely nor demure. You look like edges and thunderstorms. And I would not have you any other way.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“Come with me,” he said. “You would never be content in that world. They would cage you. They would give you playthings of silver and silk.”
His teeth burned white when he smiled. “I could give you whole worlds.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“Do you make it a habit to compliment everyone who's trying to kill you?"

"Not everyone." His eyes flashed with a hint of amusement. "Just you.”
― Thea Guanzon, The Hurricane Wars

“Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“And maybe he wanted her to be the kind of girl who dressed as Queen Mab, who loved words and had stars in her blood.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god… Sweet Jude. You are my dearest punishment”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong

“Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”
― Beau Taplin

“He looks up at me with his night-colored eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.”

I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?”

He grins up at me. “They missed.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent

“Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me?”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“You warned me that knowing your secret would destroy us. At first, it sat in our marriage like a blue- lipped ghost, hardly noticeable until a trick of the light drew it into focus. But you could always tell the days when it gnawed at my thoughts. You tried to comfort me. You stroked my face and curled my fingers to your heart. You said: “If you pry, you’ll destroy our marriage.” But oh, my love, you lied.”
― Roshani Chokshi , The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“We could fall and not break. We could alchemize music, make it physical, let it touch our unsettled souls. Our youth was so powerful it could not possibly last, or it would consume us whole.
That's why magic kissed our bruises, coddled our hearts, and then sent us on our way. Magic hoped we would carry its echo into the world, for we were never meant to stay there.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“In the dark sheaf of her hair, I saw the forest floors where wolves stalked milk-skinned maidens. In the hollow of her neck, I saw the light of precious jewels kept safe in the stinking jaws of a slumbering sea monster. In her parted lips, I glimpsed something that -- in my own unpracticed, sloppy awe -- struck me as holy. For a moment, I saw a window and not my wife. When I walked to her, it was like peering straight into something primordial and desperate, where the inscrutable space between stars had once birthed myths and gods, built palaces of story and scripture in which human doubts found a place to rest their weary brows.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“My star-touched queen,” he said softly, as if he was remembering something from long ago. “I would break the world to give you what you want.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“Only my queen would find hope in horror.” He took my hand in his and his gaze was burning. “You are my hope and more.”
“What does that make you? My horror?”
“And more,” he said.
All I saw were his eyes. Velvet dark. The kind of umbra that shadows envy. Amar stared at me and his gaze was desperate with hope. Reckless. I should’ve stopped. I should’ve stepped away. But I didn’t. I leaned forward, and a soft growl--like surrender--escaped his throat. He dug his fingers into my back and pulled me into a kiss.
Amar’s kiss was furious. No heat. Just lightning. Or maybe that was what his touch teased out of me--vivid streaks of light, dusk and all her violent glory. I was lost.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“You've seen my descent, now watch my rising.”
― Rumi

“Little blossom in peach and red
Trapping boys with your pretty head;
Tease and play, be coy and smart
For you will one day break his heart”
― A.G. Howard, Splintered

“I coax my palm into his lapel in search of my wish, returning his feverish kisses.
"Checkmate, you son of a bug," I say against his mouth two seconds before my fingers find an empty pocket.
"Sleight of hand, blossom," he says right back. " 'Tis in fact in my pants pocket, if you'd like to search there.”
― A.G. Howard, Splintered

“Morpheus reaches out to catch a teardrop on his fingertip. He holds it up in the pale glow that radiates from the few remaining sprites above us. A curious frown curves his lips. “You cry for him yet bled for me. One must wonder which is more powerful. More binding. I suppose we shall one day know.”
― A.G. Howard, Splintered