House of Sand and Secrets Quotes

“Are they the same reasons my mother had Owen? Me? Did we each think to improve on the generation that came before us, or did we just want to be certain that someone somewhere loved and needed us? I sniff. My mother discovered soon enough that a son’s love is only for the length of a childhood. A daughter’s is forever. It may be snarled up with resentment, but it goes deeper. Daughters will always eventually understand the mothers they thought they hated.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“What are we but a false set of laws laid over a wild land? We hope to tame it, but what we can’t tame we destroy. The Lammers are not as important and powerful as we like to believe. There are other magics waiting to take our place.” I think of my recent conversation with Yew – it’s true, the Lammers fear. And what they fear, they destroy. It is our way.

“You sound like a tea shop revolutionary,” he says with a sneer.

“And maybe I am, or maybe I used to be, or maybe I was almost one.”

“You talk in riddles.”

“Better than talking in rhymes.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“Before he can finish that sentence, I have my side dish in my hand, and without a moment’s pause for thought I hurl it at his head.

The plate shatters just left of his ear and Harun jerks so hard in his seat he almost topples. He recovers, eyes narrowed. “Do refrain from smashing my crockery, Felicita. With the two of you as my guests, I shall soon have no tables, and then no porcelain.”

I’m on my feet, my hands shaking. I can’t believe I just threw a plate at Harun’s fat head. Or rather, I can believe it.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“ If Pelimburg was a city of impossible times, MallenIve in summer is a pocket-watch. By three the clouds begin to gather low and black, rumbling ominously to each other as they convene, and within the hour, they release their downpour on the sweating city. A fat blob of rain splatters on the glass. Four o’clock, then.”
― cat hellisen , House of Sand and Secrets

“The two vampires exchange glances, and I sigh. I don’t need Harun’s anger on top of my own. Let the vampires do as they please. He should do what I do and learn to slip all his emotions under layers and layers of nothingness until they are barely there at all. Or perhaps that is a skill only women are taught.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“What am I to do – set a servant to dog Jannik’s heels and report on his every step so that I can rush in like a crow to gather him up if he’s ever caught? Jannik’s right about me sometimes. I don’t know what I want. I treat him like a wild thing on a leash.

I’m only doing it for his own good.

Your justification has always been amusing, Owen says. But now you’ve finally reached a level so pathetic even I can’t enjoy it any more.

I hate it when my dead brother is right about me.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“Where are we?”

“Inside your head,” he answers.

I take another brief look around me at the empty nothingness. “I’m certain I’ve at least had a thought or two in my time. I’m not that vacuous.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“She still wants to paint you, as far as I know.”

“Oh, that.” His shakes his head in bitter amusement. “It seems that I shall finally have my portrait done. You can put it up in the Pelimburg University along with the rest of your family’s. That should stir a fire under them.”

“My mother may well have an apoplexy.”

“She probably deserves to have one.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“Pull yourself together, Harun.”

Jannik hangs back, watching me rampage through Harun’s property.

“You’re an evil cow of a woman,” Harun slurs.

“It’s barely ten in the morning,” I snap back. “Is this how you plan to deal with what’s happened – by wallowing in your own filth and drinking like a bloated old rake?”

“I was trying to,” he points out. “And doing a damn fine job of it.”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“And this has nothing to do with your-” He waves one hand vaguely.

I raise a brow. “My what?”
“Your thing, your whatever.”

“I have a great many things and whatevers,” I tell him, one corner of my mouth twitching. “Which one would this be?”
― Cat Hellisen, House of Sand and Secrets

“ I have always been of the type that rather than being improved by ornamentation, is left looking shorter and rounder. MallenIve style does me no favours. “I feel like an enormous idiot.”

“Only you look rather like an enormous hand-bell.”
― cat hellisen , House of Sand and Secrets