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"But it is not for the perfect vase or the polished gem to choose their owners."

"A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harde…"

"It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death."

"Dying's a boring side effect."

"After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, an what the trouble had been …"

"Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places."

"His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match."

"His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams. In that moment, Blue was …"

"You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it."

"It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that. How many have tried, because of him? …"

"Each man in his life honors, and imitates as well as he can, that god to whose choir he belonged, while he is uncorrupted in his first incarnation here; and in the fashion he has thus learned, he bear…"

"When we serve the great, they are our destiny."

"As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan's eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and imme…"

"Don't you understand even seedtime and reaping? How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?"

"Gansey had once told Adam that he was afraid most people didn't know how to handle Ronan. What he meant by this was that he was worried that one day someone would fall on Ronan and cut themselves."

"You may keep your ten thousand talents; I am not in want of money, I have taken enough. Why only the half of your kingdom to the Euphrates? You offer me the part in exchange for the whole. Your daught…"

"She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one. Ronan wasn't a fan of lamps."

"So now, for mercy and honor shown to my people, my lord is barbarous; a tyrant, because he punished his would-be murderers, the right of their meanest citizen; a mere vaunting soldier, though wherever…"

"And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war."

"He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer."

"He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees, And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for; for reflected …"

"I am being perfectly fucking civil."

"Christianity and Islam have changed irrevocably the moral reflexes of the world. The philosopher Herakleitos said with profound truth that you cannot step twice into the same river. The perpetual stre…"

"Where the hell is Ronan?" Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech."

"The Greek World of Mary Renault - includes a list of historical figures featured in her novels"

"He had come back a man, and faithless like a man. He knew that he had longed for her; that true friends share everything, except the past before they met. If only she would weep, even that, and let hi…"

"We have to be back in three hours," Ronan said. "I just fed Chainsaw but she'll need it again." "This," Gansey replied "is precisely why I didn't want to have a baby with you."

"I guess I make things that need energy stronger. I'm like a walking battery." "You're the table everyone wants at Starbucks," Gansey mused as he began to walk again. Blue blinked. "What?" Over his sho…"

"The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes."

"She seemed to have neither sense of fullness nor taste, and would often combine foods in manners that struck Blue as problematic. She didn't believe in telling people how to live their lives , but it …"

"Gansey's partying with his mother," Ronan said. He smelled like beer. "And Noah's fucking dead. But Parrish is here"

"His second secret was Adam Parrish."

"In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul."

"It was this,: the future hanging heavy in the air, and Henry starting a quiet, drunk conversation about whether or not Blue would like to travel to Venezuela with him. Blue replying softly that she wo…"

"Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards."

"He kept telling me I was queer, and I didn't like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don't feel much in common with, half of whom hate the other …"

"A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it."

"To hate excellence is to hate the gods."

"The Glimpse of a Strong Greek Light" by Linda Proud, Solander ; a historical novelist's appreciation of Renault"

"He strode over to the ruined church. This, Blue had discovered, was how Gansey got places - striding. Walking was for ordinary people."

"Miss Searle had always considered boredom an intellectual defeat."

"It is better to learn war early from friends, than late from enemies."

"You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future…"

"Do not believe that others will die, not you.... I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear.…"

"Is this thing safe?""Safe as life," Gansey replied."

"In the darkness, he is invisible, but I can still feel him beside me. Sometimes you don't have to see something to know it is there."

"He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace …"

"What are you wishing for?' Grace interrupted. 'To kiss you,' I said to her."

"I could still smell her on my fur. It clung to me, a memory of another world.I was drunk with it, with the scent of her. I'd got too close.The smell of summer on her skin, the half-recalled cadence of…"

"Many, many readers have written asking me wistfully about the nature of Sam and Grace's relationship, and I can assure you, that sort is absolutely real. Mutual, respectful, enduring love is completel…"

"Right now, it's hard to imagine that it is raining anywhere in the world."

"You deserve all that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could.' I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. 'I would do it again and again. Ev…"

"And then I opened my eyes and it was just Grace and me - nothing anywhere but Grace and me - she pressing her lips together as though she were keeping my kiss inside her, and me, holding this moment t…"

"They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.But now I knew that every mad word was true."

"Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable."

"You're asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me," Gansey said. "Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we d…"

"Where you go, I shall go; where you die, I shall die, and there will I be buried."

"I wish you could be kissed, Jane,' he said. 'Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.' He flailed an arm toward the stars."

"If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human."

"You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again."