Karen Marie Moning

“Superglue after duct tape a girl's best friend.”

“Oh, please," I rolled my eyes, "You're a leftie, Barrons.""Touche, Ms. Lane," he murmured.”

“Anyone worth knowing breaks once. Once. No shame, no foul if you survive it. You did.”

“Sex either blows your fucking mind, or it’s not good enough.”

“Actions talk. Words are worthless. You think to discover in me a vein of vulnerability, a marbling of sensitivity glimpsed only by you because you’re special, so you can proclaim, “Look, Barrons’ torturous past has made him a monster but only because he’s suffered so much. It’s understandable that he lives by no law but his own—a violent, bloody, conscienceless law—but the healing power of my love will restore his demolished humanity!”Restore means to return a thing that was taken. Mine was not.”

“Women have been repeating the same mistake since time began: falling for a man’s potential. We rarely see it the same way, and even more rarely care to achieve it.”

“A woman who’s lived in a cage all her life. And hates it. Bored in there, aren’t you. Waiting for life to happen. And when it finally does, it steals from you what you loved most. So take back. Explode. Lash out. Blow up”

“He knows what I'm thinking. Always. We're connected. The atoms between us ferry messages back and forth.”

“When he'd pushed inside me and I'd feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing-hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I'd just needed more. He'd touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him.”

“He'd made her feel what Barrons made me feel. Bigger than I could possibly be, larger than life, on fire with possibilities, ecstatic to be breathing, impatient for the next moment together. She'd been happy in those last months, so alive and happy.”

“If only [love] could be turned off. It's not a faucet. Love's a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it- and then only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it's done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life.”

“Hours later, Adam propped himself up on an elbow and stared down at Gabrielle, pondering what made beauty.He thought he was beginning to understand. It wasn't symmetry of features; it wasn't perfection. It was uniqueness. That which one person had that no other possessed. That which was only their own.”

“The other day upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today; how I wish he'd go away!"~Gabrielle O'Callaghan towards Adam Black”

“Brutality is the refuge of the dull of mind, ka-lyrra. Only a fool conquers when he might instead seduce.~Adam Black to Gabrielle O'Callaghan”

“It had just been made excruciatingly clear to him that the human male brain and the human male cock couldn't both sustain sufficient amounts of blood to function at the same time. It was one or the other, and the human male apparently didn't get to choose which one.”

“You can't save people from themselves. You can only try to wake them up.”

“I always thought fainting showed an inherent weakness of character, but I understood it now. It was an act of self-preservation. Confronted by emotion too extreme to handle, the body shuts down to keep from running around like a chicken with its head cut off, potentially injuring itself.”

“One of the primary tenets of the course was that highly successful leaders kept journals, morning and night, in order to stay tightly focused on their goals.”

“It's so easy to lie. What’s even worse is how we cling to those lies. We beg for the illusion so we don’t have to face the truth, don’t have to feel alone.”

“It‘s funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.”

“Strength wasn‘t about being able to do everything alone. Strength was knowing when to ask for help and not being too proud to do it.”

“Oh, drop the act, Tinkerbell, and get rid of my problem. Then we’ll talk.”

“I figure the folks that are the most interesting get to go to heaven. I mean, if I was God, that’s who I’d want there with me ... I’d rather be a superhero in hell than an angel in heaven. What the feck would I do all day if I wasn’t kicking demon ass?”

“Sometimes, I worry that there's not enough room in my brain for both my dreams and reality, that I'm a hard drive with limited gigabytes and one day I won't be able to maintain the firewall between them.”

“Werewolves? Oh please, just plain stupid. Who wants to get it on with a man ruled by his inner dog?”

“Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever.”

“Almost only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes.”

“... You have me in your mouth, you don't get anybody else. Or you don't get me." - Jericho Barrons”

“Is anyone who's supposed to be dead actually dead?”

“He places the last pillow on the pile and looks at me. He jerks his head to the pile of pillows. “I watched you die. I need to fuck you Mac.” The words slam into me like bullets taking my knees out. I lean back against a piece of furniture-an armoire I think. I really don’t care. It holds me up. It wasn’t a request. It was an acknowledgement of a requirement to make it from this moment to the next like I need a transfusion my body has been poisoned. “Do you want me to ” There is no purr or coyness or seduction in his voice. There is a question that needs an answer. Bare bones. That’s what he’s after. That’s what he offers. “Yes.”

“Like a horse, honey, somebody's gonna break you.''Never. Going. To. Happen.”

“I get it the whole idea of willingly going to hell for someone. Living there insane if you have to because you’d rather be insane with them than endure life without them.”

“He’s disturbingly sexual to men and women alike in a way that sets your teeth on edge. With Barrons you aren’t sure if you’re going to get fucked or turned inside out and left a new unrecognizable person adrift with no moorings on a see with no bottom and no rules.”

“We are not perfect. What god is Examine yours. According to your mythos he was so disappointed with his initial efforts creating your race that he tried again. At least we imprisoned our mistakes. Your god permits his to roam free. At a mere few thousand years old your creation myths are far more absurd than ours.”

“Moth to a flame I follow.”

“On the lips of my enemy, my sister’s lover, my lover’s killer, I taste the punishment I deserve. I taste oblivion.”

“Sometimes I worry that there’s not enough room in my brain for both my dreams and reality that I’m a hard drive with limited gigabytes and one day I won’t be able to maintain the firewall between them. I wonder if that’s what senility is.”

“My world we humans we’re just pawns on an immortal chessboard.”

“My heart has jet lag.”

“I’m Pri-ya again. I always will be with this man.”

“My clothes melted away and were replaced by a hot-pink string bikini and a gold belly chain adorned with fiery stones. The beach was deserted. I had no idea if there were no people left or if V'lane had sent them away for privacy. "What's with the belly chain " He seemed to have a fondness for them. ‎"When I have sex with you from behind I will use it to pull you from behind I will use it to pull you closer push in deeper." I opened my mouth and closed it again. I was the idiot that had asked. "And now whenever you see the gold of it glinting in the sun you will think about fucking me.”

“It's often only in the lies we refuse to speak that any truth can be heard at all.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost and those who are walking victims.”

“You and I more than anyone else in the universe are perfect for each other.”

“Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style, park your own car out front.”

“أحب الكتب أكثر من الأفلام. فالأفلام تخبرك ما تفكر به. أما الكتاب الجيد يدعك تختار أفكارك بنفسك. في الأفلام تشاهد بيتا باللون الأحمر. في الكتاب، يقول لك هناك بيت أحمر، ويتركك تضع التفاصيل، تختار تصميم السقف، تركن سيارتك أمامه...الخ خيالي دائما ما يتفوق على كل جديد تأتي به الأفلام”

“Truth hurts. But lies can kill.”

“You can’t look at someone with your eyes and take their measure. You have to look with the heart.”

“Everywhere I looked, I could see only shades of gray. Black and white were nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we tried to judge things and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, were as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We could only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we could no longer see the light.”

“As he fills me, I wonder if—in the same way that sex makes its own unique perfume—we don’t really “make” love. As in create, manufacture, evoke an independent element in the air around us, and if enough of us did it really well, for real, not just for the hell of it, we could change the world. Because when he’s in me, I feel the space around us changing, charging, and it seems to set off some kind of feedback loop, where the more he touches me, the more I need him to.”