Nenia Campbell

“Without ethics, science would be cruelty.”

“People only picked the pretty, sweet-smelling flowers. The ones with thorns were left alone.”

“There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.”

“I bask in that sympathy because it's nice to have somebody who cares, even if it's the wrong person for the wrong reasons.”

“Mamá had always made it clear she believed girls who got raped deserved it. I hadn't done any of the things she said “bad” girls did, though. I didn't parade myself around in sluttish clothes and make untoward advances. But Mamá had been wrong about everything else so far, so maybe she'd been wrong about that, too. Maybe it didn't matter whether you were bad or good, prudish or wanton: maybe just being female was enough, for some men. Maybe, like so much else, it was only about control. But then why do I feel so guilty?”

“I cannot breathe, or see, nor swim,My darkness is composed of him.”

“For what is magic, but passion freed from reason?”

“Hatred is as easy as slipping on a well-worn woolen cloak. If only it provided the comfort of one.”

“If evil had a laugh, she thought it would sound like his.”

“We feel most alive when we are closest to death.”

“You don't find the concept of illicit love at all engaging?”“The concept, maybe. But in literature? That's like ordering a glass of tap water at a bar.”

“Ask yourself what a man without guile might do to your body in the dark.”

“Nothing is as deadly as the love of a powerful man.”

“This softening she sees in me isn't enough to make me affectionate, but it's just enough to render me inept. I can't give her what she wants — virtuousness — or what she needs — protection.”

“A woman isn't a whore for wanting pleasure. If it were unnatural, we would not be born with such drives.”

“I didn't understand what it was about men—not all men, but a good portion of them—that turned a good, solid “NO” into an “I'm just playing coy; try harder.”

“I'm not going to force you into anything you don't want. But I'm also not going to take a vow of chastity and pine away for you, or whatever the hell it is that men do in romance novels these days. I have needs. I'd rather satisfy them with you, but if you don't want me I suppose I'll just have to find someone else. Might take me a while, but I'll make do. I always have before.”

“We always vilify what we don't understand.”

“That's not cruel. This is. You come here in the middle of the night, expecting me to be awake, and ask—no, demand—me to give you things that belong to me as much as they belong to you. Never mind what it does to me. Never mind that each time I see you, I wonder if I'll ever hold you in my arms again, or be able to touch you without you cringing away like I'm a monster. I think it's fair to ask if there's an 'us,' my dear, because I suspect you're trying to use me just now. Tell me that's not cruel, and I'll let you go.”

“All statistics have outliers.”