Karen Marie Moning

“Regardless of how many people I surrounded myself with, no matter how many friends and family I loved and was loved by in return, I was alone at the moment of being born and at the moment of dying. Nobody came with you and nobody went with you. It was a journey of one.”

“I’ve been in your skin,” he taunted. “I know you inside and out. There’s nothing there. Do us all a favor and die so we can start working on another plan and quit thinking maybe you’ll grow the fuck up and be capable of something.”

“Names are illusions,” he growled. “Nonsensical labels seized upon by people to make them feel better about the intangibility of their puny existences. I am this. I am that,” he mocked. “I came from so and so. Ergo I am … whatever the blah-blah you want to claim. Bloody hell, spare me.”

“We fucked, Ms. Lane. Even cockroaches fuck. They eat each other, too.”

“How do you kill a vampire?"-Mac"Hope hes not"-Barrons”

“Evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it's good.”

“Nightfall. “What a strange word. ‘Night’ I get. But ‘fall’ is a gentle word. Autumn leaves fall, swirling with languid grace To carpet the earth with their dying blaze. Tears fall, like liquid diamonds Shimmering softly, before they melt away. Night doesn’t fall here. It comes slamming down.”

“What are you?” I said irritably. “In the Serengeti, Ms. Lane, I would be the cheetah. I’m stronger, smarter, faster, and hungrier than everything else out there. And I don’t apologize to the gazelle when I take it down.”

“He’s so beautiful,” she said wistfully. “He’s like an angel.” “Yep,” I agreed flatly. “The one that fell.”

“Barrons knows virtually everything about me. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere he has a little file that encompasses my entire life to date, with neatly mounted, acerbically captioned photos—see Mac sunbathe, see Mac paint her nails, see Mac almost die.”

“I mock everything. Don't take it so personally." Adam Black”

“I didn’t say, You are such a stuffy asshole. And he didn’t say, If you ever burn one of my quarter-of-a-million dollar rugs again I’ll take it out of your hide, and I didn’t say, Oh, honey, wouldn’t you like to? And he didn’t say Grow up, Ms. Lane, I don’t take little girls to my bed, and I didn’t say I wouldn’t go there if it was the only safe place from the Lord Master in all of Dublin.”

“Why have you chosen to spare me?” “I want us to be…what is your word? Friends.” “Psychotic rapists don’t have friends.” “I was unaware you were a psychotic rapist or I would not have offered.” “Ha.” I’d set myself up for that one.”

“He doesn’t beat me,” I said irritably. “I’d kill him if he did.” “She would. She has a temper. Stubborn, too. But we’re working on that, aren’t we, Ms. Lane?”

“From who?” “From whom, I believe is the correct phrasing.” “All right, from-the-fuck-whom, Ms. Lane?”

“If he was winter, I was summer. If I was sunshine, he was night. A dark and stormy one.”

“A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you've got a hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.”

“Don't accuse me of being morbid when I'm merely the product of a culture that buries the bones of the ones they love in pretty, manicured flower gardens so they can keep them nearby and go talk to them whenever they feel troubled or depressed. That's morbid. Not to mention bizarre. Dogs bury bones, too.”

“Electric, wild, one foot in the swamp. Never going to crawl all the way out. And I wanted to have sex with whatever he was.(Mac about Barrons)”

“His eyes bore into mine. He watches every nuance, every detail of every expression, as if his existence depends on it. He fucks with the single-minded devotion of a dying man hunting God.”

“Do you think love just goes away? Pops out of existence when it becomes too painful or inconvenient, as if you never felt it?”I looked at him. What did Jericho Barrons know of love?“If only it did. If only it 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 usually 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. You loved her yesterday, you love her today. And she did something that devastates you. You’ll love her tomorrow.”

“When you were too young and naïve to see the risks, I incurred your wrath to protect you. Scream at me for it if you must. Thank me for it when you finally grow up.”

“I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.”

“Could words and symbols wield such power? Could mere scribblings on parchment unmake a person's moral fiber? Weren't we made of sterner stuff?”

“I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.”

“Like is an emotion. Emotions”—he raised a hand, made a fist, clenched it tightly—“are like holding water. You open your hand, there’s nothing there. Better to be a weapon than a woman.”

“Why did the Lord Master take one look at you and leave? What are you, Barrons?”“The one who will never let you die, and that’s more, Ms. Lane, than anyone in your life has ever been able to say to you. More than anyone else can do.”

“Thankfully I’m not most women. I don’t get off on danger. I get off on a man with strong moral fiber. The closest Barrons ever gets to fiber is walking down the cereal aisle at the grocery store.”

“The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.”

“Hope is a critical thing. Whithout it, we are nothing. Hope shapes will. The will shapes the world.”

“Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plan and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all - good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.”

“You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I've learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you.”

“I was adrift in a sea of questions and if answers were lifeboats, I was in imminent danger of drowning.”

“Sometimes the small pleasures in life are the sweetest.”

“Nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?”

“Mom raised us to believe that every lie puts something out there in the world that's inevitably going to come back and bite you in the petunia.”

“There are only really two positions one can take toward anything in life: hope or fear. Hope strengthens, fear kills.”

“The power of thought is far greater than most people ever realize.”

“Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.”

“A lamb in a city of wolves.”

“It began as most thing begin. Not on a dark and stormy night. Not foreshadowed by ominous here comes the villain music, dire warning at the bottom of a teacup, or dread portents in the sky. It began small and innocuously, as most catastrophes do. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you’ve got an hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.”

“My philosophy is pretty simple – any day nobody’s trying to kill me is a good day in my book.”

“My city. I pondered that phrase, wondered why Barrons felt that way. He never said “our world.” He always said “your world.” But he called Dublin his city. Merely because he’d been in it so long? Or had Barrons, like me, been beguiled by her tawdry grace, fallen for her charm and colorful dualities? I looked around “my” bookstore. That was what I called it. Did we call the things of our heart our own, whether they were or not?”

“I can see you are a fine lady, but this boy is randy as a goat around you and it's plain to see. If he seeks the joys of wedded bliss, he can wed you. Without a weddin' he'll be havin' no bliss.”

“I wake up wating you. I fall asleep wanting you. I watch a magnificent sunrise and can think only of sharing it with you. I glimpse a piece of amver and see your eyes. Jillian, I've caught a disease, and the fever abates only when I'm near you.”

“That's weak! You don't know what caring is... Caring is love. And love fights! Love doesn't look for the path of least resistance. Hell's bells, Roderick, if love was that easy everyone would have it. You're a coward!”

“I kept it to remind me that although there is evil, there is sometimes beauty and light. You, Jillian. You were always my light.”

“And there you have it...if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life.”

“Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve been eating a lot of popcorn, cereal, instant noodles, and snack bars. I have a hot plate in my bedroom, a microwave, and a small fridge. That’s the kind of kitchen I know how to get around in.”

“I would wear pink because I knew my future was anything but rosy. I would accessorize myself to the hilt, and I would wear flirty shoes because my world needed more beauty to counter all the ugliness in it. I would wear pink because I hated gray, I didn’t deserve white, and I was sick of black.”