Leslye Walton Quotes

Some sacrifices aren't worth the cost. Even, or perhaps most especially, those made out of love.

Foreseeing the future, I would later learn, means nothing if there is nothing to be done to prevent it.

She laughed for her wasted, difficult life that never had to be wasted or difficult in the first place.

Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths–the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips.

That fact filled Gabe with so much hope that he grew another two inches just to have enough room to hold it all.

Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.

Viviane considered herself a rational woman.She was a Virgo. She was used to solving problems , even if it meant she spent far too much time mulling things over in the bathtub. This didn't make any sense; when she tried to envision her life without Jack or his without her , all she could think about were platypuses.What was a platypus but a kind of duck with fur?The whole idea of it was ridiculous and wrong.

To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost.

Any decent human being, witch or otherwise, had the capacity to do good in this world. It's merely a case of whether one chooses to do so.

Folks around here like to say we came from the stars. Perhaps it's simpler to think of us not as human but as creatures made of stardust
that if you cut us, not blood but constellations will pour from out wounds.

The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children.

But hidden by those large blooms was Emilienne's real garden: white chrysanthemums for protection, dandelion root for a good night's sleep, eucalyptus and marjoram for healing. There was foxglove, ginger, heather, and mint. The poisonous belladonna. The capricious peony. And lavender. One could never have enough lavender.

She found that she did not mind losing the previous moment, for this one was just as lovely.

I wonder why I haven't seen that before."
"Maybe you just needed someone to help you see the parts that aren't so obvious.

And that might just be the root of the problem: we're all afraid of each other, wings or no wings.

And she knew he would be back, just as she knew that some of the stars that shone bright in the sky were already dead and that she was beautiful, if only to Jack. And that's just the way it was.

I knew I was different, but that didn't make me as human as anyone, or was I something else?

Happiness had a pungent scent, like the sourest lime or lemon. Broken hearts smelled surprisingly sweet. Sadness filled the air with a salty, sea-like redolence; death smelled like sadness. People carried their own distinct personal fragrances.

Gabe was unusually tall, so he had to be careful where he stood, for if he blocked the sun, his shadow could cause flowers to wither and old women to send their grandchildren inside to fetch their sweaters. Because of his height, many thought Gabe to be much older than he was. This was both a blessing and a curse.

She is the glorious reincarnation of every woman ever loved.

As he rose to leave, Jack was crushed by the realization that while his father considered himself to be a great man, in his father's eyes the best Jack could ever hope to be was useful.

I love you, you know. Viviane let the words hang in the air between them for a moment, like a sweet pink cloud. Then she inhaled the words in whole, turned them over in her mouth, relished their solidity on her tongue.

They died with empty bellies, their eyes vacant of both dreams and expression.

Love makes us such fools.

The Griffith House was like nothing Viviane remembered, reminding her of how fast the world changed and of how insignificant she was in the grand scheme of things. She thought it unfair that her life should be both irrelevant and difficult. One or the other seemed quite enough.

It's ... dangerous for someone like me to be out in the open.' As if in response, my wings started to flutter beneath their shroud. I gave the cloak a good yank.
'Someone like you? Someone different, you mean?'
I shrugged. 'Yes,' I answered quietly, suddenly shy.
'So, is it dangerous for us or for you?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, are you the threat, or are we?

I feel like the whole world's been tipped on its axis. Just walking upright feels like too much today.

Falling out of love was much harder than Gabe would have liked. Normally led through life by the heart attached to his sleeve, finding logic in love proved to be a bit like getting vaccinated for some dread disease: a good idea in the end, but the initial pain certainly wasn't any fun. He came to appreciate that there were worse ways to live than to live without love. For instance, if he didn't have arms, Gabe wouldn't be able to hide in his work. Yes, a life without arms would be quite tragic, indeed.

Because I'm your mother, that's why.

I found it ironic that I should be blessed with wings and yet feel so constrained, so trapped. It was because of my condition, I believe, that I noticed life's ironies a bit more often than the average person. I collected them: how love arrived when you least expected it, how someone who said he didn't want to hurt you eventually would.

Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.

She spent her days trying to forget the sound of his voice, and her nights trying to remember.

The morning of December 23, Emilienne woke from the kind of hard, heavy sleep known only to soldiers, drunks, and mothers of newly born children.

The days she was finally brought out of the house would later be remembered as a day when shadows seemed blacker, as if something more lingered in those darkened spaces.

To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth - deep down, I always did.
I was just a girl.

I acknowledged Gabe and his attempts at flight the way a legless child might view a hopeful but misguided parent buying a house full of stairs. After a while, when Gabe offered me a morning greeting, it didn't feel like he was greeting me but rather a giant pair of wings; no girl, just feathers.

You don't have to carry it by yourself.

If mother kept a list of the reasons she confined me to the house on the hill, she'd have a length of paper that could stretch all the way down Pinnacle Lane and trail into the waters of the Puget Sound. It could choke passing sea life. It could flap in the wind like a giant white flag of surrender atop our house's widow's walk.

And then, in shocked disappointment, and stunned horror, I'm sure, Connor Lavender realized he was dead.

I like to think that he marveled at the mass of bandages that unraveled completely and tumbled to the ground, ant at the pair of pure white wings that unfolded from my shoulder blades and arched, large and strong, over my head.
But, mostly, I like to think that Jack Griffith, my father, smiled as I let go of the railing behind me and, stretching my wings to that star-studded sky, soared into the night.

After seeing Fern's little demonstration on national television" Apothia said, "your grandmother and I decided we needed something to give us strength. We haven't decided if that strength will come from food or from vodka.

Because once things turned out, good or bad, there's nothing you can do about it. It just is. And Henry liked just is.

The first of many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man's hands after hours spent in a wood shop.

Unmarried women woke in the night with tears in their eyes, not because they were alone, but because there wasn't any cake left.

Treat others with respect, and one should seldom be in need of protection. As for the times when this is not effective, one should do oneself a favor and get a knife.

Years later the lights of the growing city would erase the stars from the sky, but back then they shone through the branches like jailed fireflies.

Love can make us such fools.

I have to remind myself that love comes in all sorts of packages.

Folks around here call us el destinos.
They like to say we came from the stars. And when I stare up at the infinite heavens stretched out above us like a shroud, it's hard to imagine we came from anywhere else.

She, who'd always thought love's only companion was sorrow, learned that worry came hand in hand with love.

a Libra. Balanced. Diplomatic. Even-tempered.

For a very long time, Viviane and Jack lived in that world people inhabit before love. Some people called that place friendship; others called it confusing. Viviane found it a pleasant place with an altitude that only occasionally made her nauseous.

It seemed there was no separating the girl from the wings. One could not survive without the other.

I loved you before, Ava. Let me love you still.

Death just seems to follow some of us, don't it? Death's been following me for years. It's easy to spot your own kind. That kind of sorrow you can't just wash away; it sticks to you. And people, they can tell. They can feel it.

How foolish it was to love someone who didn't love you back.

Rowe shrugged. You. Just - you.

Why would you be given wings if you weren't meant to fly?

By this point Viviane Lavender had loved Jack Griffith for twelve years, which was far more than half of her life. If she thought of her love as a commodity and were to, say, eat it, it would fill 4,745 cherry pies. If she were to preserve it, she would need 23,725 glass jars and labels and a basement spanning the length of Pinnacle Lane.
If she were to drink it, she'd drown.

The whole world had given up on love anyway and clung instead to its malformed cousins: lust, narcissism, self-interest.

Dangers lurk around every corner for the strange.

His heart line was long and curved, and she traced it with her eyes over and over again. A person with a curved heart line was a person capable of great warmth and kindness, a person willing to give their whole selves to love, no matter the cost.

It was as if Henry carried the world, misshapen and imperfect, in his lovely wide pupils.

When Henry heard a word he didn't like, he had to lie facedown on the floor until the bad feeling stopped. Humming sometimes worked too.

If the past had taught her anything, it was that as long as she didn't love someone, he wasn't as likely to die or disappear. When they were pronounced man and wife, Emilienne silently promised she'd be good to her husband, as long as he didn't ask for her heart. She no longer had one to give.

I just don't think you should let other people d-define you,' Rowe said quickly. 'I think you could be anything you wanted.

Those born under Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain.

This time could be different. This time it could last. Maybe it would be a longer, deeper love: a real and solid entity that lived in the house, used the bathroom, ate their food, mussed up the linens in sleep. A love that pulled her close when she cried, that slept with its chest pressed against her back.

Gabe pulled her closer. You just lean on me, Vivi. I'll keep us both upright for a while.

He smiled then, bringing back that twinge in her stomach, something that she only later recognized as the pangs of desire.