"The night-haunts never lie. They could, if they wanted to, but they don't really see the point. The truth is so much more dangerous than a lie."

"I watch him go, and wonder if being good isn't its own punishment as much as it's supposed to be its own reward."

"Adversity doesn't exist to make us stronger. Adversity exists because this world is a damn hard place to live. Prove that you're better than the things it throws at you. Live."

"This isn't an army marching on the Mists. This isn't a case you have to solve. It's just a bunch of nobles coming to puff their chests out at each other an try to look important. Do what I do. Bring popcorn."

"And you shouldn't believe all the press about Ouija boards. They can't be used in an exorcism. Trivial Pursuit can, but that's another story."

"The Argentine tango isn't here to play nicely with the other children. The Argentine tango is here to seduce your women, spill things on your rug, and sneak out your bedroom window in the middle of the night."

"Cats never listen. They're dependable that way; when Rome burned, the emperor's cats still expected to be fed on time."

"Hello? I peered into the shadows.Two green circles flashed in the dark. I yelped, jumping backward and pressing myself against the wall.'And may I wish a very good morning to you, too, October. The voice was amused, underscored by a chuckle like thick cream. 'What happened? Did the prettiest little princess miss her carriage home?"

"My lord was never sane, but he was my love, once. He always will be, somewhere. Wherever it is that the once upon a times go when they die."

"Don't let anyone tell you, ever, that this is a zero-sum game. Your genius does not threaten me. It delights and inspires me."

"You'll always come back to warn him, no matter how much danger it could put you in, no matter what it costs you, because he cared for you when you thought you were nothing. You were never nothing. That didn't matter. Perception is everything in this world."

"I am so tired of this gothic crap, I muttered. 'Just once, I want to meet the villain in a cheerful, brightly lit room. Possibly one with kittens."

"None of this is real, my dear. Not this house, not this conversation, not those shoes you're wearing-which are several years out of style if you're trying to reacclimatize yourself to the ways of your peers, and are not proper mourning shoes if you're trying to hold fast to your recent past-and not either one of us. 'Real' is a four-letter-word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof."

"Only an idiot would trust a Kelpie this close to the water. Getting on its back with the scent of the sea in the air would be a fast, painful means of suicide, and I'm not a fan of pain."

"Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections."

"Just thinking about how long it's been since I've managed to wind up covered in blood, I said. 'It's like a new trend. A blood-free trend."

"Why does Eleanor let you have that much acid?' he asked. 'Why would you want that much acid? You don't need that much acid.''Except that it appears I do, since I have just enough to dissolve a human body, and we have a human body in need of dissolving,' said Jack. 'Everything happens for a reason. And Eleanor didn't 'let' me have this much acid. I sort of collected it on my own. For a rainy day.''What were you expecting it to rain?' said Christopher. 'Bears?"

"I just wasn't sure it was a good idea to approach heroing the way I'd always approached detecting. Can you really shake the world until justice falls out?"

"I'm a cat. We aren't required to make sense."

"I've never liked being looked at like I was a hero. I always wind up letting someone down. Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes the only person who gets hurt is me."

"Quentin quieted and watched her for a moment, hungrily, like he was trying to memorize every detail. Maybe he was. Forever is a long time. You have to burn the edges of memory onto your heart, or they can fade, and sometimes the second loss is worse than the first one."

"Faeries are real. Magic is real. My tendency to greet dangerous situations by plunging in headfirst and seeing how long it takes to get myself covered head to toe in blood is also real."

"Hope means you keep holding on to things that won't ever be so again."

"If anyone was going to get themselves murdered to guarantee they would remain the center of attention, it would be him."

"Crazy gets all the knives."

"You are covered in blood,' Tybalt said again, stressing the words harder this time. 'It makes me tense.' There was a thud as the guard hit the floor, and Tybalt returned to my side.'Wow. You must be tense a lot.'He sighed. 'You have no idea."

"Let's go commit senseless acts of science."

"I have a swizzle stick shaped like a little monkey, announced Rose. 'Let's help the dead man with his problem."

"I just feel like we're starting to interfere on a level that's sort of . . . extreme. 'But that's what heroes do."

"I didn't look back. Sometimes, not looking back is the only mercy the world has left to show."

"Now, if you will excuse me, a dead woman is trying to convince me to drink something that comes in layers."

"The Luidaeg sighed and put her arms around me, pulling me close. 'Come here,' she said. 'I need to hold someone, and you need to be held. It's a fair trade. Just for a little while, and then we can go on being what we are.' I thought about objecting, but dismissed the idea and nestled against her, enjoying the feeling of security given by knowing someone bigger and stronger than I was would stop anything from hurting me. That's all childhood is, after all: strong arms to hold back the dark, a story to keep the shadows dancing, and a candle to mark the long journey into day. A song to keep the flights of angels at bay. How many miles to Babylon? Sorry. I don't care."

"He said that he was sure you would be amendable to this course of action.' April paused, eyes widening, before she said indignantly, 'I believe he may have lied to me!"

"I squared my shoulders, trying to ignore the fact that I was standing in the apartment of the sea witch, wearing a fairy-tale prom gown, waiting for the attack of the mermaids."

"If it had been my decision, you would still be sleeping, and I would be hoping every hour of every night you lived was filled with the foulest of dreams.'My only nightmare in this moment is the quality of the mattress you saw fit to place me on, said Simon. 'Really, brother, have you never heard of lumbar support?"

"For us, places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world."

"I would love a sandwich,' said Tybalt, with enough gravity to make it sound like a formal proclamation. Resolved: that we will have ham and cheese sandwiches."

"Clichés are relatives of the fairy tale, and tropes aren't bad; they go with the territory."

"Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again."

"Sure. If she gets mugged, she can just flute them to death."

"I stared at her. 'But she drugged us.''That is no longer news, dumbass. Are you going to ask why she drugged you?''Allright,' I said, narrowing my eyes. 'Why?''Because, dear October, you're the most passively suicidal person I've ever met, and that's saying something. You'll never open your wrists, but you'll run headfirst into hell. You'll have good reasons. You'll have great reasons, even. And a part of you will be praying that you won't come out again."

"The moon is the friendliest of the celestial bodies, after all, glowing warm and white and welcoming, like a friend who wants only to know that all of us are safe in our narrow worlds, our narrow yards, our narrow, well-considered lives. The moon worries. We may not know how we know that, but we know it all the same: that the moon watches, and the moon worries, and the moon will always love us, no matter what."

"When the Root and Branch were young, when the Rose still grew unplucked upon the tree; when all our lands were new and green and we danced without care, then, we were immortal... We left those lands for the world where time dwells, dancing, that we might see the passage of the sun and the growing of the world. Here we may die, and where we can fall, and here King ___ has stopped his dancing."

"There was still something unfinished around her eyes; she wasn't done yet. She was a story, not an epilogue. And if she chose to narrate her own life one word at a time as she descended the stairs to meet her newest arrival, that wasn't hurting anyone. Narration was a hard habit to break, after all. Sometimes it was all a body had."

"But that's what family is, isn't it? It's traditions and trinkets that only matter when we hold them up against the mirrors of our lives, lending them meaning, lending them weight, until they become heavy enough to endure without us. We create the past in the things that we choose to remember about it. We turn everything into stories, and those stories matter because we say that they do. It's all a wheel, and ours are the hands that turn it."

"You want to go back, and so you hold on to the habits you learned while you were traveling, because it's better than admitting the journey's over."

"Most cats don't like water, and despite her pretensions of tigerhood, Julie was no different. Yes, tigers have stripes; so do tabbies. If you want to know the difference, try tossing one of each into your swimming pool. Then I would recommend running."

"I think the rules where different there. It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn't care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes."

"You'd challenge me and lose. You know it, I know it, but you'd still do it. Sometimes your sense of honor confuses the hell out of me."

"When Rome burned, the emperor's cats still expected to be fed on time."