205 Quotes by Sarah Monette

It rattled me. Not just the look or the question-although those were bad enough-but the realization that he’d simply taken a shortcut through the conversation I’d anticipated having and reached the finish line ahead of me. I’d known he was much smarter than he seemed, but I hadn’t appreciated before how quick he was, that his mind was not in any way hobbled by the scar that slowed and distorted his speech. It was so terribly easy to forget that.

The future felt like a herd of buffalo stampeding straight at me, and all I wanted was to get the fuck out of the way.

I was whole again, clear-headed, vital and focused in a way I hadn’t been since I was first learning magic, first learning to be free.

Colors got funny, like there were too many of them packed in behind your basic blue or green or whatever. Sometimes I almost thought I could see the colors around people that Felix was always yammering about. And my hearing got sharper to the point that Mavortian and Bernard yelling at each other was actually painful. I mean, it was a pain and I was used to that, but now it hurt. And I couldn’t sleep.

Some days I think I’m too stupid to be let out on my own, and then there’s the days that prove it.

There ain’t much to be said about walking across Kekropia aside from the boredom of it.

He was older than me and a hocus and educated and he talked flash, and he made like that was all there was to it, and it was him doing me the favor, being out here in the middle of absolutely fucking nothing, with the sky like some kind of monster, just waiting ’til you weren’t watching to lean down and swallow you whole.

What happened was I hit the cold place inside my head, the place where I’d been when I killed people for a living, the place especially where I ended up when a job looked like it was going bad. I can’t describe it so it makes sense. It’s really cold and really clear and nothing in the world matters except not fucking up the job-in this case, getting my damn brother on board this ship because it was what he’d said he wanted.

I look up at the stars, serene and brilliant and out of reach.