Karen Marie Moning

“I'm the one who will always watch over you. Always be there to fuck you back to your senses when you need it, the one who will never let you die. I pull my shirt over my head and kick off my shoes. "What more could a woman ask?”

“Missing Alina was worse than a terminal illness. At least when you were terminal you knew the pain was going to end eventually. But there was no light at the end of my tunnel. Grief was going to devour me, day into night, night into day, and although I might feel like I was dying from it, might even wish I was, I never would. I was going to have to walk around with a hole in my heart forever. I was going to hurt for my sister until the day I died. If you don't know what I mean or you think I'm being melodramatic, then you've never really loved anyone.”

“I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure.....he reads me so well. He's known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing disturbs him...Few can lie to me... I don't know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That's my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion.”

“The entire time I'm burning in Hell, I'll regret each tear I made you weep. But if Hell were the price for twenty days with you, I'd condemn myself again and again. - Cian MacKeltar”

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

“You, Ms. Lane, are a menace to others! A walking, talking catastrophe in pink!”

“Sheep are always looking for a new shepherd when the terrain gets rocky.”

“When he kisses me again, the last part of me that could stand myself dies.”

“It's what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.”

“I return my attention to the situation at hand and realize Reality—the impatient bitch—has made my decision for me. She does that a lot. You get busy planning your life, then it has the nerve to just go ahead and happen to you before you’re ready. Before you even get the chance to aim yourself right!”

“And Mega has a crush on Chester.""I do not!""Do too, Mega.""He's like, old!""How old, Christian says.""Like at least thirty or something."Lor laughs. " Fucking ancient, ain't it, kid?""Dude," I agree. I like Lor.”

“Grief shared was grief lessened.”

“Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly--out of bed, not just in it--commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, "I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars." It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love.”

“It's just another of Robin's sayings. Like, 'Holy strawberries, Batman, we're in a jam! Or, Holy Kleenex, Batman, it was right under our nose and we blew it!”

“I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.”

“How dare the embodiment of her worst nightmare come packaged as her hottest fantasy?”

“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. Having sex with Barrons sates my need. Then feeds it. Sates, then feeds. It’s a never-ending cycle. I get out of bed with him, frantic to be back in it again. And I—“—hated you for it,” he says gently.That was my line.“I never get enough, Mac. Drives me bug-fuck. I should kill you for what you make me feel.”I understand perfectly. He is my vulnerability. I would become Shiva, the world-eater, for him.”

“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.”

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

“Friends don’t build cages for each other.”