Mackenzi Lee Quotes

I wish I could make your world want you," Theo said.

"Yours too," Loki replied.

It would be so much easier if I did not want to know everything so badly. If I did not want so badly to be reliant upon no soul by myself.

You can't make people the way you want them to be, Alasdair. Sometimes you just have to love them how they are.

We're not courting trouble," I say. "Flirting with it, at most.

...We could have given you two some time to yourselves."
I laugh one, short, humorless burst.
"What could I have said, could you vacate the apartments for a while so Percy and I can engage in illicit activities?"
"Not illegal."
"They are where I come from." I shake my head staring down at my feet. "I couldn't have. I've been struck too many times."
"Then maybe I should have said it to you sooner. You needn't hide around us," he says. "I'm sorry you ever felt you had to, and that the world make you feel as though you had to.

Loki didn't know what to say. He knew what it was to be cast out and unwanted and taunted for the fabric you were stitched from. To want to find strength and pride in the things that made you you in spite of the world telling you that you should hide them. It was a particular kind of dissonance that was hard to understand until your ears rang with it.

And at the end of life, I don't know what's going to turn out to be the true thing, or which church will be the right one. But I don't think it really matters."
"Then what does?" I ask.
"Finding things that give you hope, and make you want to do good things for others.

She was the same person I had known. Had always known. Just a version that was more completely her.

Somehow nothing's changed, and everything has.

„Would you still find me handsome if I broke my teeth on Greek pastries?"
"Depends which teeth.

I love you, but I don't know how to help you. I still don't! I'm an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise that. It doesn't matter to me that you're ill and it doesn't matter if I have to give up everything, because you're worth it. You're worth it all because you are magnificent, you are. Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you, Percy. I love you so damn much.

And thank God, because I don't want simple. I do not want easy or small or uncomplicated. I want my life to be messy and ugly and wicked and wild, and I want to feel it all.

So long as you don't go falling in love with me." I don't know why I say it. Call it battlements around my helpless heart. Percy looks away from me fast, shoulders curling up. It almost looks like a flinch. But then he says, "I'll try my best." He

I am not weak," Loki said. "I am not your villain, and I am not your fool. I am a protector of my homeland." He thrust his hand in the air. "For Asgard!

We're not courting trouble. Flirting with it, at most. (Monty in The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue)

Oh no."
Percy looks sideways at me. "Oh no what?"
I swallow. "I'd first like it to be noted that I am most certainly not a smuggler."
"Monty..." he says, my name sopping with dread.
"And," I continue overtop him, "I'd like you to both remember just how much you adore me and how dull and gloomy your lives would be without me in them."
"What did you do?

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I would teach my body to regrow my heart each time I gave it to him, over and over and over again. Heart after heart after heart - every one of them his.

There is nothing good about watching another man claim your ship because your skin is too dark to do it yourself," he says, each word a glancing wound. "So in future, you needn't demand apologies on my behalf.

I've always been of the mind that subtlety is a waste of time. Fortune favors the flirtatious.

And you should not be frightened of the darkness, but instead be sure that the most frightening thing in it is you.

You're hopeless," he says, and it is so strange and horrible and utterly lovely how the way that he's looking at me makes me want to both back away and throw myself upon him. It hurts like a sudden light striking your eyes in the dead of night.

Or perhaps that's just me assigning subterranean levels to every goddamn breath he takes.

We're all monsters. We're all careless and cruel in the end.

I want to know everything about my own self and never to have to rely on someone else to tell me the way I work.

Let's get one thing straight," I interrupt, jerking my arm out of his grip with such force that I nearly knock out the woman standing behind me. "You are not my father, I am not your responsibility, and I did not come here to have a list of my faults related from him or be condemned for who I associate with-not by you or that damned duke. So while it's been a jolly good time, being treated like a child all evening, I think I've just about had enough and I can make my own way from here.

Yes, we have quite literally followed you to the end of the earth," Monty replied, "And there was only mild complaining

If the Good Lord didn't want men to play with themselves, we'd have hooks for hands.

It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very mush like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.

Your beauty is not a tax you are required to pay to take up space in this world.

I'm learning there is no one way for life to be lived, no one way to be strong or brave or kind or good. Rather there are many people doing the best they can with their heart they are given and the hand they are dealt.

In the east," she says after a time, her gaze still downcast, "there is a tradition known as kintsukuroi. It is the practice of mending broken ceramic pottery using lacquer dusted with gold and silver and other precious metals. It is meant to symbolize that things can be more beautiful for having been broken."
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.
At last she looks at me. Her irises are polished obsidian in the moonlight. "Because I want you to know," she says, "that there is life after survival.

You deserve to be here. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space in this world of men.

It took several thousand miles for me to begin believing that I am better than the worst things I've done. But I'm starting.

I had kissed my fair share of lads who had only used me as a counterpoint to their own virtue. My primary contribution to our circles back home had been making everyone else feel grounded and well-behaved in comparison.

It is not a failure to readjust my sails to fit the waters I find myself in.

What's the use of temptations if we don't yield to them?

Or maybe I would be a flower. But a really tough flower."

"A wildflower," Sim says. "The kind that are strong enough to stand against wind, rare and difficult to find and impossible to forget. Something men walk continents for a glimpse of."

I wrinkle my nose. "I'd rather not be glimpsed by men. Perhaps we can set up some sort of trap so that they fall off a cliff if they try to pluck me from the ground.

There are many things that make this book fiction, but the roles women play within it are not. The women of the eighteenth century were met with opposition. They had to fight endlessly. Their work was silenced, their contributions ignored, and many of their stories are forgotten today.
Nevertheless, they persisted.

You're very clever."
"I have my moments."
"Many of them. You are made of moments.

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Because women don't have to be men's equals to be considered contenders; they have to be better. That's the lie of it all. You have to be better to prove yourself worthy of being equal.

...you made a human being. And humans are, by nature, monstrous.

Somehow, letting our feelings out into the light had both eased so many of my fears and created an entirely new set that kept sleep at bay.

Maybe I was panicking. Maybe I am. Because give it a year. Or ten years. Or a life. Because I just don't think I can do it, Perce. I don't think I'm enough for you. And I don't want you to do this big thing - give me this big part of yourself - just to turn around and realize you made a mistake.

It is impossible to explain how you can love someone so much that's difficult to be around him".

I think I want a house of my own," I start, the words a discovery as they leave my mouth. "Something small, so I don't have much housework, but enough room for a proper library. I want a lot of books. And I wouldn't mind a good old dog to walk with me. And a bakery I go to every morning where they know my name.

Lakshmibai was forced to abandon Jhansi, but she left it the same way she fought for it– on horseback, with her song strapped to her back.

The stars dust gold leafing on his skin. And we are looking at each other, just looking, and I swear there are whole lifetimes lived in those small, shared moments.

Shout at me," I want to tell him. "Fight back, because I deserve it." I deserve to be fed all the ways I've made him feel unwanted, slapped with my own selfishness. But he's Percy, so he doesn't say another cruel word. Even at his worst, he's so much better than me.

The distance is great, and nothing is so hard to find as something that no one has yet found.

Poor Monty, with a father who beats you until you bleed.
Poor Monty, with a fortune to inherit and an estate to run.
Poor Monty, who's useless and embarrassing.
"Good night," Percy says, then rolls over, away from me.
Poor Monty, in love with your best friend.

I'm not lonely."
"I didn't think I was either."
I shrug so my cloak falls closed in front of me. "Do you want me to marry Mr. Doyle because you think I need a man to protect me? Or complete me? I'll pass on that, thank you very much."
"No," he says. "I just wish you had someone cheering for you all the time, because you deserve it.

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Hollow yourself or the fear eats you alive.

I'm not sure anyone is all good when you break us down to raw materials," I say.

"Max is all good."

"Max is a dog."

"I don't see how that changes anything. He's a good dog.

Which is how I come to be running through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dressed only as Nature intended.

My head's higher than his, but we're close enough that I can see the freckles beneath his eyes. If I had to pick a favorite part of Percy's face - which would be impossible, really, but if held at gunpoint and forced to make a selection - it would be that small star-map across his skin. A part of him it feels as though no one else but me is ever close enough to see.

Ladies haven't the luxury of being squeamish about blood.

There is a unique sort of agony to entering a party alone.

The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other's mouth.
A long, slow slide, then a sudden impact.

...you're not the first I've interrupted by mistake. You've not shocked me, and you've not surprised me either."
I look up at him too quickly, and my vision swims. He puts a steadying hand on my shoulder.
"If you thought I was ignorant as to the nature of your relationship with Mr. Newton, you may need to reexamine your concept of appropriate of physical fondness between friends."
I nod, trying to pretend its fine when really my muscles are clenched, and I'm fighting the urge to run. I don't want to have this conversation. I don't know where it's going, but my instincts tell me to scoot away from it. I can feel my shoulders rise, and perhaps he notices for he lets his his hands fall away, and instead, folds them in his lap.
Perhaps its only in my own mind, but it feels like a deliberate gesture, as though he's putting his hands away to show he won't raise them against me.
"We aren't that obvious," I say, and when Scipio gives me a pointed look I add," I know plenty of lads who are fond without being unchaste.
"But its clear you're not those lads."
I'm not sure he hears the way my breath hitches for he quickly adds, "which is fine. Who gives a fig for chastity anyways."
He laughs at his own joke, glancing over at me like he hoping I might join in. I wonder suddenly if this is what it's meant to be like with a father and a son and a first real love.

All those thing women are made to believe they are strange for harboring in their hearts. And I want to surround myself with those same strange, wicked women who throw themselves open to all the wondrous things the world has to offer.

We feel like changeling versions of ourselves lying here, brittle likenesses doing a mimic of the way they have seen us behave before.

In the company of women like this - sharp-edged as raw diamonds but with soft hands and hearts, not strong in spite of anything but powerful because of everything - I feel invincible. Every chink and rut and battering wind has made us tough and brave and impossible to strike down. We are mountains - or perhaps temples, with foundations that could outlast time itself.

And then Jesus says, 'Well, watch this' - "
"Really? Well, watch this?"
"That's biblical language."
"If your Bible is written by Henry Montague.

The colours of the universe are there because of the existence of womankind.

Returning to a place you once knew as well as your own shadow isn't the same as never leaving at all.

Flanked as they are by busts of the governors before them and loomed over by all those names along the walls, I feel generations of men who have kept women from their schools staring me down. Men like this never die - they're chiseled in marble and erected in these halls.

Theo looked away first, turning back to the tea-kettle. The firelight pocked and hollowed his face. 'Do you have a preference? Between men and women?'
'I feel equally comfortable as either.'
'No, I don't mean . . . not all of us can change our gender at will.'
'I don't change my gender. I exist as both.'
'You're not . . . That doesn't make sense.'
'It does to me.

So, everything seemed to be going great in Christina's court, where "Single Ladies" played on repeat and there were free JSTOR credentials for all.

I have spent so long building up my fortress and learning to tend it all myself, because if I didn't feel I needed anyone, then I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. I couldn't be neglected if I was everything to myself.

Have you ever thought," she countered, "that maybe Oliver only acts like a monster because you treat him like one?

Percy, I could say,I think you are the most beautiful creature on God's green earth and I would very much like to find a hidden corner of this opera house and engage in some behavior that could only be termedsinful.Percy, I could say, I am almost certain that I am in love with you.

He seems like he wants to touch me, but we've both lost any sense of how men who haven't kissed each other do that. He finally taps my knee, open-palmed and short, the way we used to try and hold our hands to candle flames without being burned when we were boys, and I wonder if there will ever again be a day when it doesn't feel as though he might fly to pieces between my hands.

I do not want to know things, I want to understand things. I want to answer every question ever posed me. I want to leave no room for anyone to doubt me.

That hat is idiotic."
"I know," he says. "Percy made it for me."
"I didn't know Percy knew how to knit."
"He doesn't," Monty replies, and the brim of the hat falls in front of his eyes as though in emphasis.

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I want to touch him abso-bloody-lutely evrywhere.

I'm caught between wanting to smack the pox patches off this woman's face and to smack Percy because I'm still angry about our kiss. Perhaps I could get them both with a wide swing.

I have lived most of my life as a devotee of the philosophy that a man should not see two sevens in one day

Is it contagious?
Does it hurt?
When will you be well again?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to die?

Pain and ecstasy live close-knit in my heart.

Then I brace my feet against the casements and
rescue myself.

Is he afraid of me?"
Frigga smiled. "Such heavy questions."
"They shouldn't be.

Everyone falls in immediate, passionate love with you."
"They can hardly be blamed. I'd fall in love with me, if I met me.

What we once were, that you are now. What we are now, soon you shall be.

Oh yes, am I a sodomite. Well, I've been with lads, so… yes."
She purses her lips, and I wish I hadn't been so forthright. "If you'd stop, Father might not be so rough on you, you know."
"Oh my, thank you for that earth-shattering wisdom. Can't believe I didn't think of that myself.

Loki was convinced everyone loathed the feasts but no one dared say so for fear of appearing small-minded. Being quite confident of the size of his mind-large-and his ability to walk in heels, he was comfortable saying it.

...I had believed she believed it, and I believed that someday I might could, too, when I were grown enough, but now, kneeling on the hard floors of the boardinghouse with Eliza praying for all of us, I can't feel it. I feel propped up -- on Mam's faith, on Eliza's, on all the women in this room. But all I feel is hollowed out and empty, like someone's scraped their fingernails along the inside of my heart.

He raises an eyebrow, an unmistakable tread carefully, and so of course I put on my heaviest boots and start clomping through the flower gardens.

The bricks tear at my coat like briars as I pull his hips to mine so I can feel him going stiff.

Then maybe I should have said it to you sooner--you needn't hide around us. I'm sorry you ever felt you had to. And that the world makes you feel as though you have to.

In their poor imitation of French fashion, they look like pastries in a bakery window at the end of the day, trying a bit too hard to be beautiful as they wilt.

Be a little less honest and a little more tactful.

We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with laquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.

We look at each other. The city boils around us. I want to strike flint and set it aflame. Burn everything from the sky down and start the world over.

Just thinking about all that blood." I nearly shudder. "Doesn't it make you a bit squeamish?"
"Ladies haven't the luxury of being squeamish about blood," she replies, and Percy and I go fantastically red in unison.

Spine bones as lucky charms."
"Vertebrae," I say.
"What?"
"The spine bones," I reply, my eyes still on the creature. "They're called vertebrae."
"Thank you, but that's not what I'm concerned about right now."
"If you're going to say something, at least say it right.

Perhaps the future was only inevitable once you began to shape all your actions to fit it.

Reading in excess causes the female brain to shrink.

Not a man is going to protect me, because this is a woman's fight, and we are going to protect ourselves!

You're my best mate, Monty," he says suddenly. "And I don't want to ruin that. Especially not now. I didn't tell you I was ill because I didn't want to scare you away, and if I didn't have you - if I hadn't had you for these past few years, I think I'd have lost my mind. So if things can't be the same between us, can they at least not be terrible? You're not permitted to be strange and uncomfortable around me now."
"So long as you don't go falling in love with me." I don't know why I say it. Call it battlements around my helpless heart.
Percy looks away from me fast, shoulders curling up. It almost looks like a flinch. But then he says, "I'll try my best.

Here Lies Constatijn, slain by the first penis he saw that wasn't his own.