Cynthia Hand Quotes

Who is this?" he asks. "I've seen him hanging around you like some lovesick puppy. Is he one of the Nephilim?

I'll never forget the way he tastes. It's not anything I can describe, a little sweet and a whole lot of spice, and it feels, in that moment, absolutely right.

I am not dead" argued Edward. "There are nefarious villains who would have you believe I died. But any accounts of my demise have been grossly exaggerated, I assure you, for here I am, very much alive.

Think about Tucker. Think about a good memory, she whispers in my mind. Remember a moment when you loved him. And just like that, I do.
"What did the fish say when it hit a concrete wall?" he asked me. We're sitting on the bank of a stream and he's tying a fly onto my fishing rod, wearing a cowboy hat and red lumberjack-style flannel shirt over a gray tee. So adorable.
"What?" I say, he grins. Unbelievable of how gorgeous he is. And that he's mine. He loves me and I love him.
"Dam!" he says.

Okay, that was, I have to say, about the cheesiest thing I ever heard in my life," I say to Angela as we're milling around afterward. We hug, so Billy can take our picture. "I mean, seriously. Just be? You should write ads for Nike.

Have fun in Idaho. Don't provoke any potato farmers," he says.
"Right. Because that would be bad

Gran had made him suffer through many terrible things in the name of ridding his body of the poison. The first day, in addition to the rotten apple brew she made him guzzle by the jugful, she'd forced him to stand for twenty minutes under the spray of an icy waterfall, then bathe in a tub of boiled milk. On the second day she'd wrapped a chicken gizzard around his neck, stuck a lump of charcoal under his tongue, and made him say the alphabet backward.
"What was the alphabet part for?" he'd asked after he finally reached a.
"Nothing," Gran had chortled. "I just wanted to hear you say it."
Gran delighted in torturing him.

Today it's just us and the wind.

Where are you?" I wheeze into the floor. "Where did you go?

I know Jane is dear to you," Bess said. "I also know that she's in danger. But Jane is one person, Edward. There are thousands of lives at stake. There's a kingdom on the edge of a knife. We must tread carefully.

Tucker: "Today we ran into a mama grizzly with two cubs at the ridge off Colter Bay and Clara sang to it to make it go away."
Mrs. Avery: You sang to it?
Tucker: Her singing is that bad.

That's the hardest part,' he says. 'The absence of certainty.' - Tucker

Coward, says the nagging voice inside my head. You should talk to him. Find out what he has to say.
What if he says we belong together?
Well, then you'll have to deal with that. But at least you won't be running away.
I think it's more of a brisk walk.
Whatever.
I'm having an argument with myself. And I'm losing. So not a good sign.

Humans fear death so much, but there is no death," he whispers. "There is only the illusion of it. We can never cease to be. We must stay like this. Forever.

Nice tree, he says.
That boy has unexpected depth.

Edward couldn't imagine his cousin Jane with a husband and a child, even though she was sixteen years old and sixteen was a bit spinsterish, by the standards of the day.

Don't do that," he says. "Don't regret us. I don't. I won't, ever.

So you're still in love with my brother.
-Wendy Avery

She would imagine a different life. She would seek it.

I'm looking at you. Why are you always trying to hide how pretty you are?

Tucker snorts. "Sage is a fighter, it spreads over the land like wildfire, sucking up all the water, the nutrients in the earth, until everything else dies. It's a heart little plant, that I'll give it. But it's gray and ugly and ticks love to hide in it. You ever seen a tick?" He glances over at me. The look on my face must be pretty appalled because suddenly he gives and uncomfortable cough and says quietly, "Sage does have a nice smell.

G took her hand in his and traced his finger over the delicate skin of her arm. What she didn't realize was that he was scrawling the words of a poem he had recently written. It was inspired by his lady and he had spent many long hours trying to find the words that adequately conveyed the feelings of his heart.
There were many false starts, because at first he tried to capture the moment a horse fell in love with a ferret.
Shall I compare thee to a barrel to apples?
Thou art more hairy, but sweeter inside.
Rough winds couldn't keep me from taking you to chapel,
When finally a horse would take a bride...

And then he tried to wax poetic about the ferret alone ...

Shall I compare thee to a really large rat?
Thou art more longer, with less disease.
One would never mistake you for a listless cat ...
Nor a filthy dog, because my dog has fleas.

He could never confess his passion for poetry with those poetry examples.

But then I think about what I've learned here in the last year, and I don't mean in my classes, but what I've learned from watching my friends face their futures and search for their purposes. I've learned that a storm isn't always just bad weather, and a fire can be the start of something new. I've found out that there are a lot more shades of gray in this world than I ever knew about. I've learned that sometimes, when you're afraid but you keep on moving forward, that's the biggest kind of courage there is. And finally, I've learned that life isn't really about failure and success. It's about being present, in the moment when big things happen, when everything changes, including yourself. So I would tell us, no matter how bright we think our futures are, it doesn't matter. Whether we go off to some fancy university or stay home and work. That doesn't define us. Our purpose on this earth is not a single event, an accomplishment we can check off a list. There is no test. No passing or failing. There's only us, each moment shaping who we are, into what we will become. So I say forget about the future. Pay attention to now. This moment right now. Let go of expectations. Just be. Then you are free to become something great.

This moment was written in the stars, and it is everything he thought it would be.

His mother had always approached his curse as if G wanted to spend his days as a quadruped. As if it were just another way for a privileged teenage boy to rebel. She often forgot that he didn't ask for this curse, and that if he could find a way to control it, he would give Billingsly's right arm for that information.
As if he could hear G's thoughts, Billingsly pulled his right arm in front of his body, and away from G's line of sight.
"In here, my lord," he said as he swung open the doors of the drawing room, using his left arm.

Well he should get over himself. He tried to get me burned at the stake in Brit History yesterday. Here I am minding my own business like a good little girl, and out of the blue Tucker raises his hand and accuses me of being a witch"
"sounds like something Tucker would do" admits wendy.
"Everybody had to vote on it. I barely escaped with my nuns life. Obviously I'll have to return the favour.

Tucker: Is it okay to kiss you?
Clara: What?
Tucker: I won't get struck by lightning?
Clara: (laughs) No lightning.

She'd been presented to him as the intended of Francis, the dauphin (which Edward kept thinking sounded like the word dolphin, which seemed an odd term for a prince).

Dad scowls. "Phen." He says the name like it's a swear word. "Disgusting, cowardly creatures, the ambivalent. Worse than the fallen, in many ways." His eyes are so fierce it's a tad scary. "They have no conviction at all.

This was dumb and admittedly creepy in an Edward Cullen kind of way, but it was the only thing I could think to do.

Adele took her place in front of the audience and began to sing.
"Miss Eyre, perhaps you can tell me what he's saying?" Mrs. Fairfax said. "The only other person in the house who speaks French is the master, and he hates to translate anymore."
Jane glanced at Mr. Rochester, but he stared straight ahead.
Jane listened to the song. "The first few lines are about a famous dancer ... in a club ... She wore flowers in her hair and a dress that ... oh." Adele sang in detail about how much the dress covered. Or didn't cover.
Jane blushed and glanced at Mr. Rochester, searching for a reaction to the scandalous lyrics. But he just listened. Not scandalized.
"So, yes, the dancer wore a dress," Jane continued, with slightly less detail. "And she was in love with a ... dealer. Of cards. And at night, they ... oh my."
Adele sang of a very special hug.
Jane's cheeks flamed. "Perhaps Mr. Rochester should translate."
She turned to Mr. Rochester, who coughed. He waved his hand. "Please continue, Miss Eyre. You're doing such a fine job."
Now Adele sang of the woman's roving eye, and another man visiting while her lover was away.
"They continued to love each other," Jane said quickly, maybe a bit desperately.
In the last verse, the boyfriend found out about her infidelity, and stabbed the dancer and her other lover.
"That escalated quickly," said Helen. She also spoke French, but no one had asked her to translate.
"And they both l

Now," he said. "I want to hear about your day. Did you read any new books?"
"I've read all the books we have." She wrinkled her nose. "Armies aren't very good about carrying libraries with them. I can't imagine why. We'd fight so much less if everyone would just sit down and read."
Gifford's laugh rumbled through him, loud against her ear. "A question I often ask myself. Imagine how much money the realm would save if the rulers focused their finances on libraries, rather than wars."
"Not if I were allowed to shop for books."
"England would go bankrupt," he said gravely. "Thank God for wars."
She pushed him away, playful. "You can't switch sides like that."
The corner of his mouth quirked up. "It's too late. I've switched already, and since you've forbidden switching that quickly again, I'm stuck opposing you."
"Congratulations," she said. "You've just described our entire relationship.

When you came after me at the tavern, you nearly died." He looked wrecked at the memory. "You nearly died, and then who would I have argued with?"
"You'd have found someone."
"No." He stepped toward her. "I only want to argue with you.

You're probably thinking the same thing we were: where did Jane get the rope to tie the prisoners? We researched this very conundrum thoroughly, and after two weeks we can say, without a doubt : nobody knows. It's a question that has baffled historians and archaeologists alike. Professor Herbert Halprin explains: "Ropes have been a mystery to scholars throughout the ages. The first ropes were thought to appear as far back as 17,000 BC and made of vines. Unfortunately, being made of vines, none of those early examples survived. Later, da Vinci drew sketches for a rope-making machine, but it was never built. In medieval times, there were secret societies, called Rope Guilds, whose rope-twisting practices were protected via a complicated series of handshakes and passwords -" Okay. Your narrators are interrupting the dear professor, for reasons of boredom. Plus, his English accent sounded sketchy and forced. We asked him where Jane could've gotten the rope, but maybe he thought we asked him where anyone could've gotten any rope at any given point in history. Trust us, we are as frustrated as you must be about the lack of a definitive answer.

Silver Avalanche coming up the driveway," calls Jeffrey from upstairs.
"What are you, security?" I call back.

I sneaked out to his house a couple times in the middle of the night to watch over him while he slept, just in case, I dont know, his comic book collection decided to spontaneously combust. This was dumb and admittedly creepy in an Edward Cullen kind of way

I should have fought for you, Clara, even if I would have had to fight you to fight for you. I should have never let you go.

Do you know how I think we should spend the first night of our honeymoon?" She asked in a soft, low voice.
For the first time since the announcement of their betrothal, G knew exactly how he wanted to spend the night. A pit of anxiety and anticipation formed in his stomach. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Her eyes got brighter, if that was possible. "I think we should raid our food cupboards and take some smoked meat down to the peasants who were attacked earlier!"
G worked hard to keep his face from falling. "My lady, you read my mind," he said, grateful that his lady could not read minds.

You don't know what you can do. You won't know until you try.

Christian is staring at us. He's an only child and could never understand the delicate joys of sibling abuse.

It's stupid not to communicate what you know to the adults. They're only trying to protect us. And as far as the no-secrets zone, I can't agree to that. I don't even really know you guys, so why would I tell you my secrets? No way.

Nothing can remind you of your own fragile place in the universe so powerfully as someone your own age dying suddenly, here one minute, gone the next.

After that, the only other possible time to tell her would've been the few seconds between the act of stripping off his boots and then falling downward, and he happily would've told her then, only his lips were smashed against the wooden slats of the floor before he could get the words out.
But he promised the king he would tell Jane, and a promise was a promise. So just before the world went dark, he said, against the floor, "Mah Lavy? I ammmm a horrrrfffff."
"Pardon me?" Jane's voice came from somewhere in the black clouds behind his lids.
He could not repeat himself. Besides, it wasn't his fault his wife couldn't understand plain English.

I can't believe you're old enough to have your purpose," Mom says with a sigh. "Makes me feel old."
"You are old.

It's your mind you have to train, like your mom said that one time, you have to separate yourself from all the crap, get down to the core, focus.

But she was a writer, so while she did get this moment of thinking herself somewhat brilliant, it would soon be offset by a crippling doubt that she had a gift of words at all. Such is the way with all writers. Trust us.

One minute you're a happy fourteen-yearold - good at everything you try, popular, fun - the next you're a freak with wings

Is there a reason, Gifford, that you didn't tell me about your condition?"
"Please call me G." He adjusted his grip on the trousers, letting the legs hang in front of him as though he were wearing them. Almost. "Everyone calls me G."
"I've never heard anyone call you G. Besides Billingsly, but he is a servant. He would call you Josephina if you ordered.

Jane had told him to play dead, unless the bear was about to eat him, but she didn't say how he was supposed to get out of such a vulnerable position. The bear licked the back of G's neck, and G was just about to try to spring to his feet and run for it, when suddenly the bear reared his head, let out a roar, and collapsed against G.
And just as suddenly, G realized he would most likely not die of a bear bite, but of being smothered by a bear. When his lady received the news, he hoped the king would tell her he died of a bear bite. Not because the bear essentially sat on him.

The worst part about her new chambers was that all these wardrobes and vanities and drapes meant there was no space--none at all--for a bookcase. Who on earth could feel comfortable enough to sleep in a room with no books?

Dude. Hot Bozo. Best nickname ever.

A fire was licking at the fringe of one of the drapes that hung from the four posters of Mr. Rochester's bed. It cast a warm light through the gloom, illuminating his face while he slept. The glow became him; as the fire danced, its darting light softened the severe lines of his brow and lip.
"Please fall in love with me," Jane whispered. It shouldn't be totally out of the realm of possibility. After all, Mr. Darcy fell in love with the nearly destitute Elizabeth Bennet. It could be like one of those stories Charlotte and the other girls at Lowood were always telling - the ones with rich, handsome suitors, not the ones about murder.
Wait.
Murder.
The bed was still on fire.

Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love-everybody-and that is not an excuse for you to fucking die. I love you, and I need you to be my mother, and I need you to have a life. So get over yourself.

But my anger was a slippery thing, like a fish I was trying to keep hold of, and it wiggled out of my grasp.

So what's the big emergency?" Jeffrey says. He jogs down the aisle of the Pink Garter toward where Christian and I are sitting, waiting for Angela, who uncharacteristically late. "I thought we weren't going to meet this week because we like, you know, spent all weekend together. I'm kind of sick of you people."
"Glad to see that you decided to grace us with your presence, anyway," Christian says.

I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, which keeps the business part of my brain temporarily disabled.

I am taking you out. On a date. Before things get crazy.

I didn't break up with you because of your sperm.

I love you," he murmurs. "Can you feel that? You. Not some destiny I think I'm called to. You. I'm with you. My strength. My soul. My heart. Feel it.

All the best things are like that, though, Lex, the most beautiful things. Part of the beauty comes from the fact that they're short-lived.

I Survived the Black Plague

She shrugs."Men"
"Men."
"If we can send one man to the moon, why can't we send them all there?

"Men."
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Hey, you feel like driving today?" he asks. "I don't want to walk to the bus stop. It's too cold."
"You feel like dying today?"
"Sure. I like risking my life. Keeps things in perspective.

He was sitting in his favorite spot: the window ledge in one of the south turrets of Greenwich Palace, his legs dangling over the edge as he watched the comings and goings of the people in the courtyard below and listened to the steady flow of the River Thames. He thought he finally understood the Meaning of Life now, the Great Secret, which he'd boiled down to this:
Life is short, and then you die.

Look closer. The river's its own world of fast and slow, deep and shallow, bright and shadowed. If you look at it like that, like a landscape where the fish live, it'll be easier to catch one.

He's not meeting my eyes anymore. "We're young," he says. "We've got lots of time to fall in love.

Did Jane tell you all she knows about bears?"
"Yes," the king replied. "Don't act like food, inexplicably double your height and weight, and play dead unless it doesn't work."
"She didn't, perhaps, mention how me might kill the beast?"
"No," Edward said. "Her information was more the useless type.

Tucker doesn't see me right away. He smiles the way he does when he delivers the punch line for a joke, a wry, knowing little flash of teeth and dimple. I melt seeing that smile, remembering the times when it's been aimed at me.

Again, I whisper.
The corner of his mouth lifts, and then I kiss him. Not so gently this time. His hands drop from my face and grab my waist and pull me to him. A small soft groan excapes him, and that noise makes me feel absolutely crazy. I lose it. I wind my hands around his neck and kiss him without holding anything back. I can feel his heart thundering like mine, his breath coming faster, his arms tightening around me.
And then I can feel what he feels. He's waited for this moment. He loves how I feel in his arms. He loves the smell of my hair. He loves the way I looked at him just now, flushed and wanting more from him. He loves the color of my lips and now the taste of my mouth is making his knees feel weak and he doesn't want to seem weak in front of me. So i draw back, and his breath comes out in a rush. His arms drop away from me.

Do all of your rules pertain to books? I suppose I understand why, since your social shortcomings mean books are your closest friends." He momentarily seemed taken aback at his own rudeness.
Jane narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure your true E∂ian form isn't a jackass?

He seems relieved to hear me say that. I guess idiots love company.

Some time later he heard a scratching coming from the door. G shook his head, chalking the noise up to random castle creaks and groans, but then he heard it again. A distinct scratching sound.
He raised the candle, which only had an inch of light left, and walked cautiously to the door, just in time to see two beady little eyes peeking underneath. He barely had time to register the eyes when an entire furry body snaked its way inside his chamber, flat against the ground.
G yelped and stepped back. (He definitely did not scream like a little girl.)

I'm having an argument with myself. And I'm losing. So not good.

As a side note, he decided her frown would not inspire poetry. Because the poem would read: Her frown made him desire they be better strangers.

I don't know what to say. This summer hasn't turned out at all the way I'd planned. I'm not supposed to be standing in the middle of a barn with a blue-eyed cowboy who's looking at me like he's about to kiss me. I shouldn't be wanting him to kiss me.

I'm a ferret," she said like she was confessing a great sin that she wasn't sorry for.
"I noticed that, too. I'm a kestrel. Pleased to make your acquaintance. And it would be rather splendid, except that when I fly I seem to lose my brain. I'm working on it. Flying should be useful, when I can control it more. I can fly ahead and scout. Spy on people. I can't wait to spy on people. Just think of all the dirt I'll dig up.

This is the part where I kiss you.

But Tucker is my choice. I love him. That isn't going to go away.

Go with polar bears, I say to myself. Polar bears at the North Pole. Baby polar bears scooting along after their mothers in the snow. Polar bears drinking Coca-Cola.

You aren't being sent on a mission that you don't have the power to accomplish. You have to find that power inside you somewhere, and you have to refine it. You were made for this purpose...

Your majesty, please reconsider," Lord Dudley pleaded. "Your position will be much stronger with your husband as king. The people will see it as a sign of strength - "
She took a deep breath. "They need signs of my strength, not my reliance on the men around me

Hey, Carrots," he says.

Ava's not my date. I came stag."
"Stag. You. Why?"
"So my date wouldn't get offended when I wanted to dance with you," he says.

Hot is really not an adequate enough word for this guy. He is crazy beautiful. And it's more than his looks - the intentionally messy waves of his dark hair; the strong eyebrows that make his expression a bit serious, even when he smiles; his eyes, which I notice can look emerald in one light and hazel in another; the sweetly sculpted angles of his face; the curve of his full lips.

It wasn't you're fault," I whisper. And then out of self-protection more than anything else, I bring the glory. I don't warn him or anything. I don't damp it down. I bring it. The room fills with light.
"This is what I am," I say, my hair ablaze around my head.
He squints at me. his jaw juts out a little in pure stubbornness. He stands his ground
"I know," he says.
I take a step towards him, close the space between us, put my glowing hand against his cheek. He starts to tremble. "This is what I am," I say again and my wings are out now.
His knees wobble, but he fights it. He puts his hand at my waist, turns me, pulls me closer, which surprises me.
"I can accept that," he whispers, and holds his breath, and leans in to kiss me
His lips brush mine for an instant, and an emotion like victory tears through him, but he pulls away and glances at the front door. Groans.
Christian is standing in the doorway.
"Wow," Tucker says, trying to grin. "You really know how to cramp a guy's style."
His legs give out. He falls to his knees.
My light blinks off.

Great. I've been at this school for less than five hours and I've already made two enemies simply by existing.
-Clara

Now, we, as narrators, feel the need to inform you, dear reader, that we do not know how Edward always managed to thwart kisses. All we do know is that it was a gift he demonstrated throughout his life, most notably when his third cousin the Lady Dalrymple of Cheshire was about to kiss her new husband over their wedding altar, just after the priest pronounced them man and wife, and Edward stepped forward from his place of honor by the priest and said, "I hate to interrupt, but I thought now would be an excellent time to remind the wedding party not to throw rice, on account of the fact that birds, even kestrels, can choke on it.

You figure out those things that give your life meaning, and you hold onto them. You try to stop worrying about the stuff you can't control.

But love doesn't always have to be about the happy ending. Love can be about beginnings, too.

I've learned that a storm isn't always just a bad weather, and a fire can be the start of something new. I've found out that there are a lot more shades of gray in this world than i ever knew about. I've learned that sometimes, when you're afraid but you kept on moving forward, that biggest kind of courage there is. And finally, I've learned that life isn't really about failure and success. It's about being present, in the moment when big things happen, when everything changes, including yourself.

I know. But with some people-most people, really- i just fade into the background. If i disappeared one day, really disappeared and never came back, they wouldn't even notice.

woman's mouth opened and she brandished the rolling pin over her head like a Highland warrior. "PERVERRRRRRRT!" she screamed, and then she ran at him, clubbing him wherever she could reach. Edward

I see something like fear on his face. What if I'm an alien invader trying to lure him to a secluded place so I can suck his brains out? Or a vampire, ravenous for his blood?

You do know we're officially the talk of the town," I say to Tucker. He might as well have taken a marker to my forehead and written PROPERTY OF TUCKER in big black letters.
His eyebrows lift. "Do you mind?"
I reach for his hand and lace his fingers with mine. "Nope."
I'm with Tucker. In spite of my failed purpose and everything, it looks like I'm actually going to get to keep him. I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

That wasn't Christian," she says.
"Brilliant observation, Mother."
"What happened?"
"He's in love with another girl," I say, and pull the silver laurel out of my hair.

He pretended to stretch his arms, in order to shift even closer to her. (This isn't in the history books, of course, but we'd like to point out that this was the first time a young man had ever tried that particular arm-stretch move on a young woman. Edward was the inventor of the arm stretch, a tactic that teenage boys have been using for centuries.)

That's ironic, because I always thought you were the ugliest out of all the angels.

We could go back to the way things were before, him accusing me of stuff and me pretending like I don't have a clue what he's talking about.
Right.
I'm not that good a liar, even when I'm lying to myself.

You should try to be nicer to the other horses. You're herd animals. Who will you run with if he goes back to tell the others of your two-faced personality? Who will you compare apple notes with? Soon you won't have any friends but me.

Just because we're girls doesn't mean you have to coddle us.