Heidi Heilig Quotes

And once everyone agrees something is one way, all the other ways it could have been disappear.

Had I been too selfish? I had never known my mother, but I knew my life as it had been without her: the ship, the sea, the myths, the maps . . . and, yes, Kashmir. The pain I felt at the thought of losing him - the same pain that kept me at arm's length - gave me a hint of my father's own struggle.

That's all we can do. Live in the moment. Love in the moment.

You know, if I had your morals, I could solve all my problems."
He shrugged one shoulder and slipped the watch back into his pocket. "If I had your problems, I could afford to have better morals.

And in that moment, I saw the horizon unbounded and I reeled with the vastness of it. What new shores would I discover if I could only travel those few inches? A storm - a tempest in the pit of my stomach - but I was the skiff tossed on the waves, and my father's lesson like thunder in my ears: don't get too close. Still, the temptation was there.

Live to regret it.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even sorrow.

Aye, Captain!" With little effort, he swept me up and hoisted me over his shoulder, knocking the air out of me. "Shore leave!" he shouted as he trotted down the gangplank.
"Kashmir!"
"Ah!" he said as I pounded him on the back. "That was my kidney!"
"Put me down," I said breathlessly, "or I'll take out the other one!"
"You should know, amira," he said, emphasizing the Persian accent he often kept hidden. "We don't negotiate with terrorists!

After all, you can only hold one person tight if you're holding on with both hands.

Why did the stories I knew best never end well?
But why too did I feel at home among them?
I could never give up the myths, the maps, the ship that had shaped me.
Blake's home might be paradise, but my home was the Temptation.

Why hold off the inevitable? Why, for the ephemeral.

Chance favors the prepared mind, and there's no mind more prepared than yours.

If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go?"

"Could we find a map of someplace perfect?"

"Like paradise?" I asked, teasing.

"Here? No." He stared upward, the first stars shining in his eyes. "A better place. Someplace where nothing goes wrong. There must be a myth like that somewhere."

I bit my lip; my shoulders fell. "Navigation involves the beliefs of the Navigator and the mapmaker. And I don't think I've ever met anyone who truly believes in a world without suffering.

The moment stretched like a rack and I writhed upon it.

I never knew you had such a fine eye for fabrics," I said as we continued up the street. "You should have been a tailor instead of a thief."
"I have a fine eye for all things, amira, which is why I'm a thief and not a tailor.

But when I'd fallen, she'd jumped, and inshallah, I had a chance now to say the things I should have said long ago. All I had to do was be brave.

Or at least pretend I was, long enough to blurt something out.

Paradise is a promise no god bothers to keep. There's only now, and tomorrow nothing will be the same, whether we like it or not."
I bit my lip and tasted oranges; the juice was very sweet. "Is that really true?"
His smile was bright in the moonlight. "I promise."
"Then I suppose . . . just tonight - "
This time I did not turn away, and so I discovered that his lips were even sweeter than the orange.

You're no kind of captain if you keep jumping ship.

Don't get caught. The last thing we need is for you to go to jail."
"For treason?" he said, running a comb through his tousled hair. "We wouldn't go to jail."
"Really?"
"We'd be shot."
"You always know just what to say."
"I try to look on the bright side.

Every choice has a cost, Miss Song. The real question is whether or not one is willing to pay it."
"No, Blake. The real question is whether it's worth the price.

When I was young, I learned to expect loss. Every time you slept, something disappeared. Whenever you woke up, someone else was gone. But . . . I also learned that every day, you created everything anew. And whatever you had, you enjoyed as long as it lasted. Spend money when it's in your pocket." He took my hand and put the orange in it. "Eat fruit while it's ripe." His other hand found my cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. "Paradise is a promise no god bothers to keep. There's only now, and tomorrow nothing will be the same, whether we like it or not.

Love isn't much of a legacy, Mr. Firas."
"I think there's none better."
"It doesn't last."
"It doesn't have to.

I was written into that map as a landmark. Before I'd even known it, I'd been a part of this place, and it was increasingly hard to pretend it wasn't a part of me. Something of it lived under my skin, indelible as a tattoo. It was the home that might have been and for the first time I felt the loss of it.

But even if the captain rewrites his own history, how could it affect your reality? I'm from a place you call a fairy tale, and I'm still here."
"But . . . the Vaadi Al-Maas was real once. People believed in it."
"I believe in you. Simple enough, right?" His smile was heartbreaking.

Do you regret it, amira?"
"Regret . . . what?"
"Meeting me. Knowing me." He searched my face. "Loving me."
Everything seemed to stop at the word; it hung in the air between us, tangible and real. "No," I said at last. "No."
"But you fear you will someday. That's why you hold back. That's why you want to know you can change things before you commit." He let go of my hand and stood. The distance between us ached like the cold of a winter sea. "You watched your father chase your mother for years, and you wished he didn't love her. What will you do to my memory when I'm gone? Will you chase it like a dragon? Or will you banish it like smoke?

His eyes were so inviting that for a moment, everything in me wanted to reveal this part of myself, as though the truth was a butterfly, wings fluttering, green and gold and quivering to be free. I was a closed book, a rolled map, a dark territory, uncharted; I was surprised by my urgency, but after all, to be known was to exist.

There are a lot of things that are illegal but not wrong. And probably more that are wrong, and still legal.

I've always tried to resemble a brave man.
It didn't used to be so hard - and I've had so much practice pretending. After all, when you're a thief, you're always pretending not to be. The same is true when you're poor. And sometimes also when you're in love.

Where are you going?"
"Out. Like you."
He raised an eyebrow, but he didn't press for more information. "One should always make one's own mistakes, instead of the mistakes of others, amira."
"Out like me, then."
"Dressed like that?"
"And what's wrong with it?"
"It looks like you chose the pieces by throwing darts. And you are terrible at darts. Besides, it's much too short." He pointed vaguely toward my ankles and winked. "The whole world can see the top of your foot. You look like a hussy."
I grabbed my skirt and flashed him my knees. He pretended to swoon. "Don't worry. This is late Victorian, not early. More permissive.

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Sometimes fate makes choices for us.

I glared at him. "I wish you'd stay out of my room."
"That's a funny joke, princess, when you're talking to a thief.

The age of exploration is long over, amira. Now it's the age of globalization. And once everyone agrees something is one way, all the other ways it could have been disappear." I

The treasury doesn't belong to the king, it belongs to the people." "I've tried that one before. It didn't work. If you can get arrested for taking something, it's not yours." "That's

Blake . . . it's inevitable," I said, repeating the words I'd learned. "You've seen it on the horizon. You know what's coming. Paradise is always lost."
"That's a convenient turn of phrase," he said. "But paradise is never lost. Only destroyed.

Our lives are before us, not behind."
"That depends on where you're standing on the timeline.

Love makes fools of us all. He has to believe it will work, because he's in love.

The laws of the jungle remind me of the laws of the street. When I came abroad, I had to learn a different set of laws. Everywhere we go there is a different set of laws. Most of them unwritten.

Who would be captain?" he said. "Uh, I would." "Oh, no, no no. Guess again." "You can't mutiny, we don't have a ship yet." "I'm planning ahead." I

And Mister . . . ?"
"Firas," Kashmir said, folding his handkerchief neatly and making a crisp bow.
Blake's brow furrowed as he took in the fine clothes. "A sailor?"
"Her tutor," Kashmir said smoothly.
Blake cocked his head. "You're much younger than any of my tutors."
"Baleh, I am wise beyond my years," Kashmir said. "And of course I have a natural inclination to it. My people did, after all, invent algebra. Including the zero.

There has to be a line, Kashmir," I said angrily. "A person can't do just anything for love."
He shrugged one shoulder. "I would."
"Yeah, well, you're a thief. Your relative morality is already suspect."
"Ah," he said then, standing. "Well. I'll leave the morality for those that like the taste of it. I always preferred bread.

Then I saw the Temptation gleaming like fool's gold on the black water, and my anger returned. The ship was hers too; everything was hers. The room where I slept, the life she had saved . . . had she created it in the first place? And even now, my heart. All hers.
I was not a jealous man - it wouldn't bother me at all if only I had something of my own. So what was mine? The coat I wore? Bought with stolen gold. The money in my pocket? Taken from the harbormaster. I pulled out the handful of tarnished silver; it gleamed dully in the moonlight. I cast the coins into the harbor like dice, like bones. They tumbled into the water and I watched the ripples disappear as though they'd never been.

Nix," I said, and her name was a poem. She tilted her face up to the dawn; my lips met hers. She pressed close to me, and then there was no past, no future - only now. No her, no me. Only us.

But my father told me, and my grandmother told him, whenever you try to change something, you sacrifice something else.

Our lives are before us, not behind.

Why? Don't you know why you love me?"
"I know that I'm happiest at your side," I said fervently. "I know that when we're apart, my heart is with you, when we disagree I still want you near. It's like I was made for you, amira, but I don't know why."
"Kashmir . . ." She laughed a little in disbelief. "That's . . . that's what love looks like."
"But is it only a trick of Navigation?" I asked, nearly pleading. "And if so, what is truly mine?"
"I am."
Her words took me by surprise. She said it so simply - so quiet, so true. Only two words, three letters, one breath, but never had a promise held more meaning. She turned to me then, and in her eyes, I saw not oblivion, but infinity, and the stars were not as bright as her smile.

I should have guessed Kashmir would become a nuisance. And a bad influence. But most importantly, a friend.

She is not philosophy, I am not an ethical question. I will not risk my existence to satisfy your curiosity.