“She was so tired. Overwhelmed. There was something incredibly therapeutic about sitting, pulling a blanket around herself, and watching someone else’s problems for a while.”

“And more. Yumi was one of the Chosen, picked at birth, granted the ability to influence the hijo, the spirits. It was an enormous honor among her people. And they never let her forget it.”

“Trauma doesn’t decrease with company, but it does grow easier to work through when you know someone else understands.”

“Human beings are bundles of emotion puppeting muscles like a marionette. We emote not only with our bodies, but with our very souls.”

“Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them.”

“You may feel lost. Don’t expect gratitude. Just help them.”

“Welcome home. Welcome back. We missed you. I missed you more than I should have, more than I wanted to. I went to hell for you. I’d do it again.”

“You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”

“I would rather lose this entire war than live without you, and if that means I have to prove myself over and over, then I'll do it. You gave me your heart, and I'm keeping it.”

“I’d give everyone the me they wanted, needed, craved, and in exchange they’d care about me.”

“It’s hard when you look up and realise that everyone’s moved off and left you in that place by yourself. Like they’ve all gone on and you’re there still, holding on to this person you’re supposed to let go of.”

“I want to explain her in a way that would make you love her, but the problem with this is that loving is something we all do alone and through different sets of eyes.”

“Because if I allow myself to be angry, I will never stop.”

“If I loved you as much as he claims to love you, nothing would’ve stopped me from keeping you.”

“If I loved you as much as he claims to love you, nothing would’ve stopped me from keeping you.”

“If I loved you as much as he claims to love you, nothing would’ve stopped me from keeping you.”

“If I loved you as much as he claims to love you, nothing would’ve stopped me from keeping you.”

“If I loved you as much as he claims to love you, nothing would’ve stopped me from keeping you.”

“Your lola told stories about the country she had come from; your father told you the stories of himself, his destined for greatness. They are private stories told on stages behind thick curtains, seen only by the teller, and no one else.”

“He kissed the center of each of your palms, precisely where the priest said the Savior suffered the nails to be driven.”

“I wonder what the songs will say about the Devil now that she is covered in the blood of her own God.”

“And you understood, finally, that there had never truly been a she or a you but only a terrible, lonely I.”

“Your sister may have inherited your father’s gift for strategy, but you're the one who got his bloodlust.”

“It's you. It will always be you, until the end of time.”

“Athena, the dead muse. And I, the grieving friend, haunted by her spirit, unable to write without invoking her voice. See, who ever said I wasn't a good storyteller?”

“Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.”

“The door wasn’t there because you have any obligations left to these people, or this world. It was there because sometimes people can’t let go of who they thought we were, and so they keep trying to tangle us in nets and drag us back. That doesn’t mean we have to go. Or if we do go, that doesn’t mean we have to stay.”

“Watching it was like watching a potion get made, where you could see the sparkle of magic or the ether or whatever it was pouring into the code itself, like honey from an open wound.”

“She doesn’t want to be an anxiety-ridden mouse who’s afraid of the dark and doesn’t like to be alone.”

“I would be honored to hear your story [...] Whether it is long or short, broken or whole, sad or joyful or angry or strange, I want to hear”

“It was the first time I thought about how strange it was that the thing I spent all my time doing belonged to a culture that wasn't mine. But my parents were the ones who taught me piano. It is just as much a part of my blood as it is hers.”

“Nothing is fair, except that we try to make it so. That’s the point of humans, maybe, to fix things the gods haven’t managed.”

“One more deal I struck with a disinterested universe: If I’m good enough, I’ll be happy. I’ll be loved. I’ll be safe.”

“Who were we when not cleaved to each other?”

“Demeter is going to kill me… Resurrect me… And then Hestia is gonna kill me!”

“It never occurred to her to doubt her welcome. Such was the gift of a child raised with love.”

“My blood. My books. My knowledge. Anything. It is yours.”

“She will find the hornet’s nest and set it on fire. When the angry hornets fly out, she’ll poke them with her sword.”

“One day love became not an offering of safety, but a reminder of everything cruel and dangerous in the world.”

“I rarely share this part of my life with others, but I want to tell it to you now. A piece of armor, because I trust you. A glint of falling steel, because I feel safe with you.”

“I hate the thought of dying from something I could have avoided... But losing you would be even worse.”

“Just knowing you existed somewhere in this world was enough.”

“That should have been the end of it. But when do mediocre men ever go away quietly?”

“Outside, the rain was repeating us, saying my words to the pavement: please, please.”

“She was drawn to these books—girls with powers, girls who were monstrous, girls who had the potential to be terrible and violent things.”

“You can feel the internal prayer the woman recites, hoping he will come.”

“If I drown in this ocean tell my mother I’m still angry
If I drown in this ocean tell my body it’s okay to rest.”

“Being the worse girl means, at least, I'll be remembered”

“If she wanted either of us to be that kind of daughter, she should have been that kind of mother.”

“I always thought evil hung in the sky above our heads, the black whorl of it, a portal to darkness. That’s where storms came from—when the evil got too great and God had to release some of it down on us. We had to pay a little bit for it.”

“They ask me where I have been, and I tell them travelling. They understand that. They have grown through the dark themselves.”

“We die; we leave ghosts of ourselves behind. Voices on answering machines, bodies on video, fragments of souls in handwriting.”

“And seeing her happy? Seeing her happy is everything. And I’m happy too, because I get to be stuck in her orbit for the rest of my life.”

“No such thing as luck. Just angels and demons putting their thumbs on the scale.”

"His imperfection made him sacred, his strength made him holy. But the lust he inspired in me made him wicked, and the ease with which he bent me to his will was the closest thing to divinity I could imagine."

“For when man has the power to do anything, then anything he will do.”

“I know the spells I make aren't helpful, but it's still an important dream to me.”

“Write me a tragedy, Lev Fedorov,” she whispered to him. “Write me a litany of sins. Write me a plague of devastation. Write me lonely, write me wanting, write me shattered and fearful and lost. Then write me finding myself in your arms, if only for a night, and then write it again. Write it over and over, Lev, until we both know the pages by heart. Isn’t that a story, too?” she asked him softly.”

“It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall.”

“If I ask what I'm asking only of people who agree with me at the outset, with whom I already share a dream and a language, then there's no point in asking at all.”

“So this is healing, then, the opposite of the ambiguous dread: fullness. I am full of anger, pain, peace, love, of horrible shards and exquisite beauty, and the lifelong challenge will be to balance all of those things, while keeping them in the circle. Healing is never final. It is never perfection. But along with the losses there are triumphs. I accept the lifelong battle and its limitations now. Even though I must always carry the weight of grief on my back, I have become strong.”

“If you would've just waited for me to tell you I felt the same, if you would've never come here, I'd be yours. We'd be ours.”

“They were like beacons in an endless abyss of grief.”

“Whenever someone talks about the "good old days," they forget to mention who it was "good" for.”

“Mrs. Choi thought Guested parties were white people nonsense or the work of the devil. Sometimes both.”

“There is no God here tonight. Only me, and I am vengeful.”

“Terrifying Bob won't even mess with the Jollibee, which makes me sad on his behalf.”

“You can love something so hard that you hate it at the same time. Each shortcoming hurts more because you care. The city and my body are like that.”

“The smell of sampaguita fills the air. It's coming from you, the magic that's always been you, that you've finally given yourself the ability to unlock.”

“Magic wasn't real, after all. There were better, more mundane ways to explain things.”

“I know that bone-deep loneliness that comes with being abandoned and the fear that it'll keep happening no matter what you do.”

“Halloween. One way or another, he was going to get rid of this poltergeist for good.”

“Today, my outside resembles the way I feel within. ”

“And...how do we find a sacrifice worthy of his Clownliness?”

“No matter how much distance lies between us.”

“How would life feel if I didn't have to always hold on tight against the darkness? Who would I be if I could live in the light?”

“If anyone were to claim greater happiness in their careers than I do in poking about sunlit wildwoods for faerie footprints, I should not believe it.”

“I am saying that with you, I have no armor. I feel everything. For better or worse.”

“The years we spent together... The princess who adored you... You destroyed them all.”

“In the morning, you can forget it. You can go back to pretending you don't like me, and I can pretend that I don't care. But for tonight, let me pretend you're mine.”

“They are past-tensing my heart—my whole beating, bleeding, torn heart—right in front of me.”

“I'm lost for words over the million little ways we can hurt for family we hardly know.”

“I made you into my private Christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions.”

“Why folk insisted on singing about great warriors all the time, Rikke couldn’t have said. Why not sing about really good fishermen, or bakers, or roofers, or some other folk who actually left the world a better place, rather than heaping up corpses and setting fire to things?”

“The world is doable when she is near me.”

"Not kings. Just selfish men."