K. Ancrum Quotes

Ten million light-years from now
bathed in the radiation of a time without time
are the bones of a girl who loved Ryann Bird.

In the dust left over from our supernova
atoms spread farther and wider than hope
are the pieces of the heart of the girl who
loved Alexandria the Great.

And suddenly, with a jolt of horror, he realised that he couldn't live without it anymore. It was as much a part of him as anything now. He couldn't run from it any more than anyone could run out of their own skin. It would just keep coming back, over and over, curling up out of him, growling like hunger.
He would crave the burn until he was dead.
August curled up against the wall and put his head in his arms.
He gripped the lighter so tightly that his knuckles went white.

Diversity is a flower that blooms with greater beauty and greater strength each time it is cross-pollinated.

Jack fulfilled every inch of every requirement expected of him. Taking the lead when August got weak, handing it back when his own knees buckled. Hitting against each other back and forth until Newton's cradle turned into Huygens's pendulum and they finally moved as one.
After that thought, all at once, like a horrible cacophony of sound, the voice that lived behind his teeth whispered:
This is the love of your life.

I am reminded that I no longer have to wonder, or look back at what was left behind. Because I know who and what I am, and I know where I am going. And I know that when I finally get there, you'll be coming to join me.
Because we'll always wind up at the same place when the sun goes down for good, Raleigh.
We are all together in this incomprehensible wait.

August's heart seized.

He didn't … know he could have this.

Jack kissed him so carefully that August thought he would fall to pieces. Kissed him with the weight of knowing the price of risk. Then he gazed back at August like his heart was already breaking.

Don't...take time for granted. You have all this freedom and opportunity and people around who love you. Make sure you use the time you have to love them back.

When the time came, she was ready.

Ryann Bird walked the hall of ages: from the gates of man to the arches of the gods, and thought about what it meant to be Ryann Bird.

They send word on the wing of a bird but faces are my currency, and till i'm paid in full, they may as well send nothing.

Jack kissed him so carefully that August thought he would fall to pieces. Kissed him with the weight of knowing the price of risk. Then he gazed back at August like his heart was already breaking.

It was the same face that Jack had made on the roof, in the middle of the night, when they rolled in the grass, when he sat back with August's blood and ink on his hands, when his face was lit orange with flames, when he'd opened the door to Rina's room, when he stared across the gym at the homecoming dance, when he pulled him from the river and breathed him back to life.

Jack had been waiting. He'd been trying. He was scared. There were tears in his eyes and it took August's breath away.

She said, "Diversity is a flower that blooms with greater beauty and greater strength each time it is cross-pollinated." And I believe she was right.

Take my eyes; take my voice; take my hands; take it all. If the stars exist behind the night and there is a king who grants the wishes of kings, if hope is a tether that binds to the light, I'd pay all the years I have left in darkness, please don't take him.

I remember the attic of your house. The way the sun shone gold through the slats in the windows. The dust on the floor and the crowns we wore. I remember your throne, the Wicker Throne, and mine, the Wooden Throne. I remember sitting on them, hands clasped between us. You were always the better king.

My mom once told me that being alone makes you feel weaker every day, even if you're not. But it's not as bad if you're with other people who are alone, too.

Fighting for yourself is another way of loving yourself.

This book is for all of us who looked up at the sky in wonder, and then cried when we learned how much calculus separated us from the stars

They don't want the danger, and the darkness and loneliness," Alexandria interrupted softly. "They want the heat and the light, but they don't want radiation."

Roland closed his mouth and looked at Alexandria with indescribable pain and indescribable fondness.

"The stars have weight," Alexandria finished. "And my little life wasn't heavy enough to outweigh your want of it.

Where we are, there is light." The wind blew hard from the east and the trees rustled their branches. "From where I'm standing… it is warm enough.

Every story has many sides, depending on where you're standing when it happens.

He wanted Jack's clawlike fingers back on the nape of his neck. He wanted it to hurt so he could still feel it later. He wanted it so bad he could hardly breathe.

You still read fairy tales?"
"Every part of the human condition is packaged neatly in fairy tales. Every bit of culture that makes us who we are." She tutted at him. "When I was a girl, such things were regarded with respect."
"I've always had trouble with that," he replied dryly.
Rina scoffed and settled down on the floor. "I know. But one day you'll learn it. All virtues not granted at birth are taught to you by life, one way or another. My mother told me that.

I love you and we don't need the other world to keep that."

He glanced at the small window in the door to see if the guard was watching, then leaned over quickly and pressed their foreheads together.

"It's just true," he said. "It always has been. In this world and the next. They could take everything away and leave us with nothing, and I would still love you.

Please look at them and know that you too can seize your failure by the neck and look it in the eyes. Know that you can gaze at the you that was and say, "I love you. You can be more than this."

Know that you can step forward, even when everything in you is screaming to keep looking back.

You are evolving and growing.

You deserve to.

For some reason, thinking about what's far away helps prioritize your feelings about what's all the way down here.