Beth

“You stop, and you turn back into stars. Mum says everyone’s made of stars. Is that true?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, and liked Anna even more than before. ‘All matter is forged by nuclear fusion reactions in the hearts of stars. They take hydrogen atoms, which are the littlest bits of the stuff the world is made of, and they bolt them together into bigger and bigger atoms – helium, oxygen, carbon, everything. All the atoms that make you. You’re star dust.’ She looked pleased with that. ‘And then when my atoms have finished being me, they go off back to the stars?’ ‘Some of them will be rain, some will be earth, some will float away and light up when the solar wind comes, and that makes the aurora. And like you say, some of them will find their way back into a star.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Half Life of Valery K

“Humans are weird animals; partly we’re wild, and partly we are clockwork. Unholy devices, all of us—mechanisms bolted onto bone.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“Chivalry—Kuroda, you know when women put vegetables on a spoon and zoom it round so their kids think it's a magic butterfly or something? Chivalry is just what your mum called being a decent human being so you'd feel like a really good boy when you were nice to people. Don't say it to grown-ups.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“I just hate Paris. I’m surprised more people don’t have some sort of allergic reaction.’
Thaniel decided to let it lie, whatever it was. ‘Only you could hate Paris.’
‘Thaniel, I grew up bowing to immediate family. Every random Frenchman thinks that the only proper way to say hello is indecent assault. I thoroughly hate Paris.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow