The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.
Do you love him?”Deryn swallowed, then pointed at the screen. “He makes me feel like that. Like flying.
It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.
At least one thing was consistent about her life: It just kept on getting more complicated.
I spilled more times than a glass of milk on a roller coaster.
And a special thanks for not burning up the whole ship. Including yourself, you daft bum-rag.
I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.
Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.
Ignorance doesn’t lead to salvation, nor does knowledge pave the way to sin. – Cinda Williams Chima
I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady.”Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. “There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction.
The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there’d been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly.
Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.
Maybe human beings are programmed … to help one another, even to fall in love. But just because it’s human nature doesn’t make it bad, Tally. Besides, we had a whole city of pretties to choose from, and we chose each other.
Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.
That Shay was in possesion of hand grenades was a comforting thought showed what kind of night this had become.
Alek said, “Do you think I’m being a fool?” “I think you’re trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war.
He thinks Goliath can end the war,” Alek managed at last. “The man wants peace!” “As do we all,” Count Volger said. “But there are many ways to end a war. Some are more peaceful than others.
Surely no one would ever use such a weapon against a city.””There are no limits in war,” Volger said, still staring out the window.
No matter how far from the war we run, it always catches up with us.
I’d watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal – against normal, not beside it. Locks didn’t cure; they strangled.
What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, ‘They lived happily ever after,’ and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.
What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.
Nature didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.
And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful… or if the fall had changed the story completely.
…I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who’s that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say.””I’d rather have something to say.
But you weren’t born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.
…humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world.
Now,young lady,I suppose you’re here for a work assignment.”Work?” Tally said.They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.
It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.
The very idea of making shoes by hand boggled her mind.
Shay sometimes talked in a mysterious way, like she was quoting the lyrics of some band no one else listened to.
With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future… all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.
Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. “I’m Tally Youngblood,” she said. “make me pretty.
That was the trick – to keep punching, no matter what.
First love is amazing and wonderful, but a kind of panic underlies it, a sense of not knowing what you’re doing.
Maybe that was the price of loving someone: you lost your grasp of where they ended and you began.
And I kind of love it that you want to know everything.
…this is life. Right here in this room, with you, is life.
You don’t know what it’s like, when your best friend disappears.
Looking for a thousand years is worth it, if in the end you find what you need.
More lies, but maybe lies were better than the truth.
But I feel more real when I’m around her. Like I’m not fading.
We’re not freaks, Tally. We’re normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we’re not hyped-up Barbie dolls.
Some mornings when I wake up, it takes a long time to remember who I am. Like, it takes a while for everything that’s happened in last month to download into my brain. It’s nice, not knowing. Even if it’s just for five minutes.
That’s the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: You’re all brainwashed into believing you’re ugly.
Most men’s awareness doesn’t extend past their dinner plates.
I’m not the one going for a biology degree. I’m just a philosophy major who eats people.
As Melissa got closer, the taste of school began to foul her mouth.
Assisted him? Dylan made the repairs. I only fell and hit my head, from what I can recall. Yes, I make excellent deadweight.
Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch.
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.
Tally wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage.
Once we turn, it’s new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty.” Shay dropped her arms, and her board stopped drifting. “Then dead pretty.
History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.
Deryn put her own arms around herself, but it didn’t feel the same.”Barking spiders,” she muttered softly,
I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.
The lie took form as she spoke, pulling on as many strands of truth as it could reach.
A milli-Helen is enough beauty to launch exactly one ship
Weird, even for one of us. Or maybe she’s worse.””Worse how?””Normal.
I’m a girl.”When Deryn opened her eyes, the lady boffin was staring at her with no change of expression. “Indeed,” she
Maybe they’re not as mindless as we thought, or so dedicated to turning every last human into one of them. Like Kalyn says, they were just bored, waiting for something better to happen.And that better thing is us.
I’ve learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I’ve also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.
I wouldn’t say design has become strictly functional. A lot of cars these days look downright comic book to me, and the info-gadgets with which late industrial people spend the most time – phones, music players, etc. – are blobjects.
The difference between being a part-time writer and a full-time writer is like the difference between dating someone and living with them. Some of the romance is gone, but you learn things you’d never know just by dating.