Lilith Saintcrow Quotes

They all looked like a shampoo commercial, healthy and clear-skinned, perfectly proportioned, a group of handsome young men. Their clothes hung on them like they were glad to be gracing such supermodels.

And ordering me around is exactly the wrong way to make me do what you want.

I don't even have moderately big breasticles. They just look like - well, nevermind what they look like. At least they stay strapped down when I worm into a sports bra.

I looked like a ghost. And I should know. I've seen a few.

As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.

I turned my face into Japhrimel's shoulder. "You're going to disappear," I said into his coat, not even caring that I knew what it was made of. "Just stay for a moment, just please just for a minute, a second - "
"Dante." His fingers came up, tangled in my already-tangled hair. "I heard you calling me. I tried to answer."
"Just for a few seconds." I buried my face in his coat, his other arm closed around me. I inhaled the smell of cinnamon, of amber musk, the deadly smoky nonphysical fragrance of demons. Filled my lungs with the breath of life. "Before I have to burn this whole fucking place down."
"Be still," he answered. "I am here, I have never left your side. I told you, you will not leave me to
wander the earth alone.

Most of us, as we undergo the growing up process, do not get what we want or even what we should. We get what we have, and no more, and we find out how to make what we have work for us.

Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?

Dryads gathered in knots, hushed, and for once satyrs did not chase them but stood solitary sentinel, horned heads upflung and broad nostrils quivering. Kelpies and selkies hesitated, between horseform and biped shape, their wicked teeth gleaming as they snorted and stamped; among them, night-mares or elfhorses along the shores of the Dreaming Sea - which touches all shores, always - tossed their manes but did not neigh.

Maybe handling her memory every day for five years had made it fade, like the mortal thing it was.

White and scrubbed, antique brass fixtures and a skylight letting in a flood of sunshine. Wow. You could get a tan standing around in the shower, for Christ's sake.

First you find out what you have , Dad would say. Then you figure out how to make it work for what you need, 'cause you don't get what you want. You get just what you have and no more.

Fury is the best fuel of all. It is so clean, so marvelous, so ruthless. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, rage against evil is better than sorrow. Sorrow can't balance the scales.

Dru Anderson: Thanks.
Graves: No problem. First one's free. Look, you really can't go home? What happened.
Dru Anderson: You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
Graves: Try me.
Dru Anderson: I just can't go home, not until tomorrow.
Graves:Do you need a place to sleep?
Dru Anderson: I'll find somewhere.
Graves: I know a place.
Dru Anderson: Why is it there's always a guy who thinks he can get something out of the new girl? Every goddamn town, it's the same thing. Some guy thinks he's God's gift to the displaced.
Graves: I just asked if you wanted a place to sleep, Jesus.
Dru Anderson: Sorry.
Graves: No problem. So, I'll take you someplace you can sleep tonight. Someplace safe. Okay?
Dru Anderson: How much?
Graves: I keep telling you, first one's free. You want to play some air hockey? Good way to get your mind off stuff.
Dru Anderson: Sure.
Graves: Cool. You finished?
Dru Anderson: Yeah, I guess. Graves?
Graves: Huh?
Dru Anderson: Thanks. Nice gloves.
Graves: Hey, you know. Chicks dig guys in gloves.

Goddamn. Well, let's call that an experiment and chalk it up to experience. All hail Jill Kismet the scientist.

I wondered what I'd end up looking like once I bloomed. I couldn't even guess. If I had to be stuck in my own skinny, gawky, coltish body forever ... well. It probably wouldn't be so bad.
I wouldn't mind a little more in the chest, though. But wild horses wouldn't drag that out of me. Ever.

When a Were moves in like that it means they're offering support. Cat and canine weres are very touch-feely and bird Were have a whole elaborate protocol for brush ad flutter. Snake Weres like to get right up into your aura and breather in your face, all but rubbing noses like Eskimos. And let's not even talk about Werespiders. I shivered.

I was feeling safe. Not the kind of safe where you know there are still bad things howling outside the door waiting to get in. No, it was the kind of safe where you sink down in your bed at the end of the day and know you can go to sleep and everything is going to be the same tomorrow.

Jesus, you've got a death wish."
"Right now I have a bathroom-and-sleep-somewhere safe wish, kid.

I don't believe in getting clothes that just look pretty or that'll fall apart - they have to stand up to a lot of abuse.

So you're a dom, huh? Nice." I stabbed my pancakes again. "Kinky."
"You're the one who ties people up, babe.

Christophe's smile was a marvel of edged sweetness. When he grinned like that he looked handsomer than ever, the hint of danger just about threatening to stop a girl's heart.

He was the only boy I'd found worth dating in God knows how many schools. I mean, ever since he'd been bitten by a werwulf he'd been rock-steady. The best thing about this totally effed-up situation.

Oh, dear me." Nathalie sank back down in the chair and examined her Uggs. "The sarcasm could've started dripping off her and stained the floor. "Is it conspiracy, treachery, murder, or open warfare? I'll have to choose my lipstick accordingly.

Better to be strong than pretty and useless.

Oh, the testosterone. You could have cut it with a cafeteria spoon.

Funny, how things became very simple once a man's course was decided. It was the aimlessness of choice that made mischief, among both sidhe and mortals.

His eyes were green chips of flame, and the growl was so thick it blurred the air around him, the sound of a very pissed off skinchanger.

There was fashion and there was idiocy, and while she was vain enough to love the former, she was not willing to indulge the latter.

I'm probably the only sixteen-year-old girl in a three hundred mile radius who knows how to distinguish between a poltergeist from an actual ghost (hint: If you can disrupt it with nitric acid, or if it throws new crap at you every time, it's a poltergeist), or how to tell if a medium's real or faking it (poke 'em with a true iron needle). I know the six signs of a good occult store (Number One is the proprietor bolts the door before talking about Real Business) and the four things you never do when you're in a bar with other people who know about the darker side of the world (don't look weak). I know how to access public information and talk my way around clerks in courthouses (a smile and the right clothing will work wonders). I also know how to hack into newspaper files, police reports, and some kinds of government databases (primary rule: Don't get caught. Duh).

Some days, a killing spree seems like a good idea.

It was stealing her breath, imbecile. Go get a towel. -Christophe, Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow

Other dads actually sat at the dinner table. Mine left me a fifty and a reminder to do my goddamn katas.

It's always difficult to say goodbye, especially when one has spent a long time - literally years, in the case of a series - inside a character or two, suffering and celebrating with them.

Touch me again, and it will be your last act in life - Blue Eyes.

Someday, Dante, I will discover how your mind works

He stared at her face as if he wanted to peel it off and
take it home with him.
What a gruesome thought, Rowan.

Oh God, Oh God we're all gonna die doesn't really fit the definition of banter, now does it?

Fight scenes are very physical for me. Sometimes I require my own body to move through them before I can tell where a character's likely to feel it.

It wasn't easy, but she was used to swallowing.

Still, even idiots get lucky sometimes. I felt lucky tonight. Or maybe just reckless.

If a man seeks to drink enough to blind his conscience, tis acquavit or nothing.

You're my friend, Danny. You understand? There's no debt between friends.
Maybe it's just that the debt gets so high you stop counting it.

I pulled in a soft breath. My lungs were starving, crying out for air. I lay still, and a cough tickled at the back of my throat. It always happens when you're hiding, a cough, a sneeze, something. It's stupid. The body decides to screw around with you, even though it knows being quiet is the only way it's going to go on living.

He wiped away the tears, tenderly, and I forgot to weep as he told me silently everything I always wanted to hear.

Now," Graves finally said, "anyone else want to piss me off? Anyone else think this is a goddamn democracy?

Are you listening, little bird?

I guess since the groin is the center of a guy's world, he rarely guesses it isn't the center of yours.

I'd kind of expected that kids who knew about the Real World wouldn't act like jock dipwads. Guess I was wrong.

But when a girl's motivated, miracles are possible.

He'd pulled back a little, just with his lower half, and I was afraid the scorch in my cheeks would set fire to the rest of me, because I an idea why.
Wow. Oh wow.

Lucas went even paler. "Then you're on the track to suicide," he whispered. "Take my advice, Valentine. Run. Run as fast as you can, for as long as you can. Steal whatever bit of life you can. You're already dead.

Richelle Mead delivers sexy action and tongue-in-cheek hellish humor-if damnation is this fun, sign me up!

Zombies smell worse than anything you can imagine if you haven't been hunting things on the dark side of the world. It's a ripe, gassy odour, like rotting eggs and meat gone bad, crawling blind with maggots. It's road kill and decayed food and body odour all rolled into one package and tied up with puke.

There was a hole inside her, and it twisted.

What do you say when someone takes on a really bad ass, murdering sucker for you? There just aren't words for that.

A long, ear-tearing howl threatened to deafen him, but he was already past the wight as the lanceblade sank in and cut deep, Gallow's body airborne and spinning, his axis almost parallel to the rooftop as the Veil bunched and shivered. Landing, still spinning, the lance a propeller now, the last wight baring its yellowed fangs and hissing. Another curse, this one hurried and malformed, hurtled flapping for Gallow's eyes, but his own spat phrase of the Old Language batted it aside, a dart of moonglow shredding the black wings. Skidding,

Avery: "Humility is a virtue, Kismet."
Jill: "So's discretion. I suck at both. Didn't you notice?

I got a washed out version of Mom's curls and a better copy of Dad's blue eyes, The rest of me, I guess, is up for grabs. Except maybe Gran's nose, but she could have been trying to make me feel better. I'm no prize. Most girls go through a gawky stage, but I'm beginning to think mine will be a lifelong thing. It doesn't bother me too much. Better to be strong than pretty and useless. I'll take a plain girl with her head screwed on right over a cheerleader any day.

I have set you as a seal upon my heart; I will not return to Hell.

It could have been possible to put a little more fuck you into his tone, but some of it might've slopped out the sides.

It wasn't sarcasm." Graves blew out a cloud of acrid smoke. "It was pointing out a fallacy in your logic, babe."
Anna's jaw actually dropped. For a moment, I wasn't sure if I should laugh or push him out of the room. Way to go, Graves.

Chess isn't one of my favorites, it takes a cool calculating hatred to play well, and I'm not good at that.

Sometimes you meet a girl and it's like matter and antimatter. You just hate each other for no damn reason.

God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution - to just not relax - was kind of sucking.

That's the funny thing about old hurts- they just wait for new heartache to come along and then show up, just as sharp and horrible as the first day you woke up with the world changed all around you.

He kissed her, over and over, printing blood-flavored kisses on her cheek, her throat, her jaw, her mouth.

And now here he was in my kitchen. Smelling like apple pies and looking at me with a direct seriousness that made him even cuter. The bruising spreading up the side of his face had halted, and under it he was very pretty. Not jock-pretty, or the hurtful kind of pretty that tells you a guy is too busy taking care of his royal self to think about you.

Death did not play favorites - He loved all equally.
What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure .
The god's voice - not quite words, just a thread of meaning laid in my receptive mind -

God and Hell both damn it,

- leave me," Japhrimel snarled. "You will not leave me to wander the earth alone - breathe, damn you, breathe!

No matter how much time goes by, missing someone never gets any better. You just learn to work around it.

Sleep beckoned, warn and wide and full of welcome oblivion.
It was no use. I couldn't crawl back into unconsciousness. I had too much to do.

Hi. I'm Dru Anderson. My father went way-out wack after my mom died and now he travels around hunting things that go bump in the night, killing things you can only find in fairytales and ghost stories. I help him out when I can, but most of the time I'm deadweight, even though I can tell you where anything inhuman in this town is likely to hang out. I'm skipping school because I won't be here in another three months. None of it goddamn well matters.

I had to settle for two of the most inadequate words in the English language, words to pale to express what I needed to say. Thank you.

Okay. I'll deal with Benjamin. You're safe, okay? Nothing's gonna happen." His mouth pulled tight against itself. And now I was having some sort of heart attack. Because when he looked at me like that, my chest started to feel like it was turned inside out. "Promise."
And that - the promise, the way he said it with utter certainty - was enough to make me tear up again.

Almost sure wasn't good enough. Almost sure, in my experience, is the shortest road to oh fuck.

Why do you eat your own heart? Because, O King, it is bitter, and because it is my heart.

First one's free.

He stared at his hot chocolate like it held the secret to the universe.

I thought I'd pay you a visit, my dear. Since you're so interesting."
My mouth shifted into high gear, leaving my brain behind. "You know, you're the second guy in a few days to call me that. You should be more creative.

He laughed. The laugh could strip the skin off an elephant in seconds.

His dark eyes met mine, just the same. A lean, saturnine face, his cheekbones balanced, his mouth a straight unforgiving line. The demon Tierce Japhrimel touched my cheek, his knuckles brushing my skin. The contact sent a shudder through me, my body recognizing him before the rest of me could dare to. "You burned," I managed, before another fit of retching and gagging shook me. "You burned - you were
ash - "
"While you live, I live." The corners of his mouth turned down, an expressive movement that managed to give the impression of a grim smile. "I suppose nobody told you." I shook my head weakly.

I'm getting really tired of bleeding. Someone stop the world, I want to get off.

It truly sucks to doubt your friends when you only have one or two of them, I realized.

His shoulder bumped mine again. "Can I ask you something?"
I didn't answer. He was going to ask me anyway. People don't say that if they don't want to pry something out of you.

I sensed him leaning forward. It's weird to feel someone's attention on you that way, like you're the only thing in the world they're listening to. Most of the time people are distracted, or just thinking about what they're going to say next.

I just ... knew, the way you know how to breathe or to pull your hand back from a hot stove.

Boys always get the best eyelashes; it's like some kind of cosmic law. And half-breed kids get some kind of extra help there from genetics, too.

Christophe, with the careful tone of an adult telling a kid not to pet the nice foaming-rabid pooch.

I went to the entrance to the restroom, where the hallway did a sharp bend so nobody could peek into the girls' pee-palace.

I try not to sleep. It disturbs the circles I'm growing under my eyes.

With twenty-twenty hindsight I could solve every fucking problem, couldn't I?

What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure.

How had I managed to tie my boots? I didn't even remember getting dressed. I was out here in public at the mall. What was I wearing? Jeans. I could feel socks. I had my boots on. I plucked at the edge of my t-shirt and saw it was red. I was wearing Dad's spare Army jacket, and there was a heavy weight in the right pocket that had to be something deadly.

The red scarf at her wrist was joined by others, knotted up her arm to the elbow. A dozey, sicksweet fuming of harvest incense followed her steps, rippling in her wake.

It's not the type of work you can put on a business card.
I sometimes play the game with myself, though. What would I put on a business card?
Jill Kismet, Exorcist. Maybe on a nice heavy cream-colored card stock, with a good font. Not pretentious, just something tasteful. Garamond, maybe, or Book Antiqua. In bold. Or one of those old-fashioned fonts, but no frilly Edwardian script.
Of course, there's slogans to be taken into account. Jill Kismet, Dealer in Dark Things. Spiritual Exterminator. Slayer of Hell's Minions.

Don't worry about me," I finally said. "Really. I'm more worried about you." And even more worried about where Graves is.
"Are you?" A fey smile lit his face, and I caught my breath. It was a shock to see him look so happy. "Well, then.

But when the blood is mine, it can send the boy djamphir a little crazy. It's something about me being svetocha. Super-happy stuff in my blood even before I "bloom," something that reaches down and wakes up the crazy in anyone with a touch of nosferat.
After the blooming hit, I'd have my own superhuman strength and speed. And that super-happy stuff in my blood would make me toxic to suckers just like Raid is toxic to insects.

He hadn't told me everything, but I'd left him for dead. I guess we were just about even.