"I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as a hand print in the snow."
"There are no safe choices. Only other choices."
"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."
I run after her, not really giving chase. I'm running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop."
"In every end, there is also a beginning."
"Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But his is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us."
"There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops."
"No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We're all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A fissure forms in the vessel. I'm cracking open."
"What happens if your choice is misguided?"
"You must try to correct it."
"But what if it is too late? What if you can't?"
"Then you must find a way to live with it."
"We can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you."
"But forgiveness...I'll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."
"I changed the world; the world changed me. Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected."
"May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating."
"Women who have power are always feared."
"I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all."
"And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try."
"We are all unkind from time to time. We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds."
"I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it."
"You can never really know someone completely. That's why it's the most terrifying thing in the world, really - taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. It's such a precarious balance, it's a wonder we do it at all."
"Things aren't good or bad in and of themselves. It's what we do with them that makes them so."
"One can never go back. One always has to move forward."
"Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn't actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn't exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker's reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma's ideas are as inconsequential as dust."
"People see what they want to see when they need to."
"It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments -- changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day."
"There's no time to be modest. Reason will not work here. Without warning, I kiss Kartik. His lips, pressed against mine, are a surprise. They are warm, light as breath, firm as the give of a peach against my mouth. A scent like scorched cinnamon hangs in the air, but I'm not falling into any vision. It's his smell in me. A smell that makes my stomach drop through my feet. A smell that pushes all thought out of my head and replaces it with an overpowering hunger for more."
"They see her differently now, as somebody. And isn't that what everyone wants? To be seen?"
"We're never prepared for how much we love our children, for how much we wish we could protect them by being perfect."
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