When Heroes Fall Quotes

“This is what you must understand, Elena. They are wrong. Women bear the trials of their men, the delivery of their babies, the weight of their families. Women are extraordinarily strong. So, you must trick the men into giving you power. Do not tell them you are strong, and do not fight them with words because words can be undone. Fight the injustice with action, lottatrice mia, because action can be understood in any language, by any man.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I’m wearing heels bigger than your dick, so if this is a pissing contest, I think it’s safe to say I win,”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“You know, it is the contrast between two opposites that heightens them both to keener glory. You shouldn’t be afraid to be coarse, just as I shouldn’t be afraid to be gentle. Too much of one thing is boring, Elena.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“My therapist told me there was a name for what I had, that furious drive for perfection that had marked my entire life. Kodawari, the Japanese word for the relentless pursuit of perfection. I didn’t so much want to be perfect––which I was aware enough to know was an impossibility––as I wanted to seem perfect.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“Death was nothing. Sacrifice, that was the real killer.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“you are just a girl in a very large world that owes you nothing. Not one thing in your life will come easy. This is the way of girlhood in Napoli. I wish it was not so. I wish I could have given you a better start, but understand, every woman must be a fighter, Elena, because history has tricked men into thinking women are less.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“Not everything is so black and white, Elena,” I murmured as I slid a lock of her deep red hair between my fingers. “Between the hero and the villain, there is the anti-hero. A person who may do evil deeds and seem unscrupulous, but who, within their own set of morals, possesses a big heart and the willingness to protect that which they know to be good.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I had always found, if you could understand something, it was almost impossible to hate it because then you could empathize with it.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“But I cried then, and I discovered just how many types of tears there were. Angry tears, so salty they burned my hot cheeks. Wallowing tears, the kind that seeped into my mouth and made me nauseous as if I’d swallowed too much sea water. Lonely tears as I realized how few people I had in my corner, how few loved ones I could call my own. As I realized much of that solitariness was my fault because I’d pushed so many people away out of fear of being hurt.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“But you see, I am not a professional, and there is something about all that studied perfection that makes me eager to break her.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“He looked criminal, filled with wicked intent and handsome enough to tempt the pope to sin.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“You watch too many movies, Elena. In real life, the villain always wins because we are willing to do anything to succeed.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“The man had broken into my house to invite himself to dinner he’d bought, and somehow, he made me feel unhospitable and ungracious.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“And those strong hands threaded with veins I found myself fantasizing about far too often were wrapped around the obscene length of his cock. He was jerking off.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I don’t want to fuck her. She doesn’t look like she could even take my cock, let alone enjoy it. I just want to fuck with her. I have a feeling she’ll be a challenge, and I haven’t had one of those in a while.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“When you grew up poor, money wasn’t only a primary motivator; it was almost an obsession.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“Knowing my thoughts is a privilege I don’t share with strangers.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“He was wrong, but something about his demeanor made me want to confirm his worst beliefs about me. I had the bad habit of living up to people’s worst assumptions and cutting off my nose to spite my face, just because my feelings were hurt that they would think so little of me. My therapist called it a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” I called it survival instinct.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“He was right, what he’d said about us being made of the same stuff. We weren’t opposites, not even close. He was a chaos of contradictions, and I was a contradictory chaos, but that was why we worked.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I realized I had this idea of a hero as someone who was socially accepted, someone who was revered by the masses. But heroism didn’t always arrive dressed in white and topped with a halo or on the back of some shining steed. Heroism was about your willingness to right wrongs, to sacrifice your own comfort and safety to affect change when you crossed something that needed changing. It was assuming responsibility for people who didn’t have the power to stand up for themselves. It was about being brave enough to live life by your own rules and accepting who you were, flaws and all.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“Love’s made you foolish,” I finally told him, trying to shrug off the fantasy, let the idea of it roll off my back. “I live in the real world.” “You live in the world you create,” he corrected. “That’s why you’re the boss.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“What I said was that a man in love has one weakness, his woman. It’s his Achilles’ heel. But that same love makes the rest of him impenetrable, strong as a god.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I’m just happy to have shared it with you. Being able to be there for you is a privilege I have the feeling you don’t afford to many people.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I used to think we were such a close family. It took me a long time to realize that we are a collection of strangers pretending to be family. We’ll never know each other well enough to love each other properly if we keep secrets the way we have.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“It wasn’t a threat. A threat implied probability, a chance either way. No, my words were a promise.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“I’d learned early on that the two most powerful motivators in this life were fear and love.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“Wear it tonight. –– Capo”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“walked”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“wanted to hope, but if life had taught me anything, it was that hope was a slippery thing, and just as soon as you found purchase with your hold, it slipped away again, elusive and cruel.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall

“You can cage the man, Elena, but not the idea. No collection of walls is strong enough to hold me or mine.” “You are very poetic about organized crime.”
― Giana Darling, When Heroes Fall