Everything that rises will fall. Empires, societies, governments. None of them lasts forever. Why? Because even though they are the products of change, they become resistant to change. The longer a society survives, the more...

When no one understands, that’s usually a good sign that you’re wrong.

Da used to say that only fools and cowards scorned fear. Fear keeps you alive.

Da used to say that lies were easy, but trust was hard. Trust is like faith: it can turn people into believers, but every time it’s lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back.

The bodies in my floor all trusted someone. Now I walk on them to tea.

Only fools and cowards scorned fear. Fear keeps you alive.

doubt is like a current you have to swim against, one that saps your strength.

The only way to truly record a person is not in words, not in still frames, but in bone and skin and memory.

His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante’s Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. “What have we here?” he asks.”Required reading,” I say.”It’s a shame they...

The first trick to lying is to tell the truth as often as possible. If out start lying about everything, big and small, it becomes impossible to keep things straight and you’ll get caught. Once...

I just hope I’m smart enough to stay dead.

He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the...

An omission is not the same thing as a lie, Miss Bishop. It’s a manipulation.

Be lost. Give up. Give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.

He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were really all as stupid as they seemed).

The worse thing you can do in a fight is stop moving. When someone attacks, they create force, movement, momentum, but you’ll be okay as long as you can see and feel the direction of...

What if I mess up?””Oh, you will. You’ll mess up, you’ll make mistakes, you’ll break things. Some you’ll be able to piece together, and others you’ll lose. That’s all a given. But there’s only one...

Well,” I ask, leaning over him, “do you wish to stay?””I do.””And why is that, Cole?” I say, tipping toward him so that our noses nearly brush.”Well,” he says with a smile, “the weather’s quite...

But the things about people, Kell had discovered, is that they didn’t really want to know. They thought they did, but knowing only made them miserable.

Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity. Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.

Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.””What do you mean?””When you lie to everyone about everything, what’s left? What’s true?””Nothing,” I say.”Exactly.

That’s how he saw climbing, a physical exercise in positive and negative space. The vast expanse of white drawing the small, person-shaped speck into sharp relief.

I’ve always been good at math. It’s straightforward, black-and-white, right and wrong. Equations. Da thought of people as books to be read, but I’ve always thought of them more as formulas—full of variables, but always...

Cole steps forward, his fingers reaching around my shoulders, and kisses me. It is sudden and smooth and soft as air against my lips. The wind whips around us, tugging at the fabric of our...

A confession: I am not a good friend.

Properly buried.””Properly kept.””That is the way with witches.””And with all things.

Da thought of people as books to be read, but I’ve always thought of them more as formulas- full of variables, but always the sum of their parts.

Looking for trouble, he’d say. You’re gonna look til you find it.Trouble is the looker, she’d answer. It keeps looking till it finds you. Might as well find it first.Why do you want to die?I...

Wesley’s touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some...

Some people forget, he thought. A bad thing happens to them and their mind sweeps in and buries the bad thing deep, and all that’s left is a stretch of white in their heads, like...

There were some people you had to stay away from, people who poisoned everything in reach. Then there were people you wanted to stick with, the ones with silver tongues and golden touched. And then,...

Magda looks at me as if I’ve gone mad. Or I’ve grown up. It’s kind of the same thing.

He leans in, resting his weathered hand on the bed. “Treat all the bad things like dreams, Kenzie. That way, no matter how scary or dark they get, you just have to survive until you...

You really are like him, your father.””I can’t tell whether you think that’s good or bad.””What does it matter? It’s simply true.

Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.

But the fact is, dreams catch us with our armor off.