It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks...

His eyes are blue, and blue eyes up close are a celestial phenomenon: nebulae as seen through telescopes, the light of unnamed stars diffused through dusts and elements and endlessness. Layers of light. Blue eyes...

The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it’s not ‘just right’ all along the way. The trap I...

Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?

She’d spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened–apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn’t a...

When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

Do you know what they’re called? They’re the Shadows That Live, Zuze. They’re assassins.” “Like me,” said Zuzanna cheerfully.

I’m not looking for fate. I’m seventeen. I’m looking for kissing, and to move forward a few paces on the game board. You know, do some Living. (With my lips.)

Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She’d done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft...

My phone buzzes. It’s from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won’t be needing. —a) Hi. I’m Zuzana. I’m actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way...

There is intimacy in pain. Anyone who has comforted a sufferer knows it—the helpless tenderness, the embrace and murmur and slow rocking together as two become one against the enemy, pain

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you’re trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give...

The dead,’ she said. ‘And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you’d think they were corpses hanging on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements. […]...

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn’t stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have...

Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?… Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that?