Vicki Pettersson Quotes

The kiss was like swollen storm clouds ready to erupt, and when he moaned into my mouth, it was dewy and thunderous and zinging with ozone.

And that was is. Life sometimes flips on you like that. One minute you're looking at your reflection in the water, not entirely sure you like what you see, and the next minute you are upside down, submerged in a world where even familiar things look new.

Bridget scoffed. "And you can lay odds that a man who's driven in his life's pursuits - whatever they are - will be equally driven when it comes to you." Stilling suddenly, she looked up from her work. "You can lose yourself to a man like that.

Next time," I said wryly, swinging open the door, "just give me a knife and ask for a vein.

Success, she [Evie] claimed, made people want to trust you.

But no life was without it's strain & strife, not if it was fully lived. Opening up to experience, even the good ones like trust & love, was to open yourself up to the pain. I suppose the key was to not compound matters by making the rest of it unnecessarily hard. My need for control had certainly done that in the past. So I made a promise to myself in that moment.
I would make a concerted effort to reach for what was soft & good in this world. I'd find a place to settle into, and hold still so that this world's good and soft could reach back & touch me as well.

Just because someone tried to make you into a victim didn't mean that's what you had to be.

I didn't know his middle name or his favorite color, but I knew how his thoughts felt caressing my mind. The bright tang of his adrenaline coursing under my skin. The force of his heart, strong and rhythmic and a bit sad, pumping within my own chest.

Why the hell was she smiling like that?...Her mouth was blown so wide that the soft insides showed at the corners, like another grin was building in there. As if her laughter tumbled. Like joy was a living thing.

Most had faded to a light jade by now ... all except Chandra, I noted, with more than a little satisfaction. She was still a dazzling Day-Glo emerald, and I gave a little finger wave from across the room. She merely returned the finger.

'When there's time for everything, there's value in nothing.'

I snorted. I could write a doctoral dissertation on his 'charitable spirit.

'It ain't ever over. You can't have no future if you don't have no past, and the past ain't never done with you...At the end of your life, all you have is what you know.'

'We've all had judgement lapses that had us tiptoeing toward our own personal apocalypse.'

Lovers, even those who are married, always exist autonomously of one another, no matter how close they are or how long they've known each other. That's why jealously can flare in even the most intimate relationships.
Because you know that at some basic level this person exists separately from you. No mater how close you are, the landscape of their life is always tinted a different hue than your own. - Hunter to Joanna

Memories are stronger than we think.

Now her life was under attack, and she [Kit] was shocked to find how fragile everything she'd built really was. She was dumbfounded, too to find that while people were being ripped from her life like paper dolls from a chain, she longed to be the one who'd be gone first.

Because you can't unknow your life's experiences,' Grif said. This was his area of expertise.

I saw you, looking like Hayworth, making me want to pin you up, pin you down, take you for a different kind of ride altogether.

There's something about seeing an adult you knew in childhood that makes them marginally vulnerable to you, and vice versa. There's also something comforting in thinking that if they made it this far, relatively unscathed, then maybe you didn't turn out half bad either.

What about Cher and Suzanne?" I called after him.
"I don't know, but if you end up kissing them, call me. I wanna watch.

But they weren't in an ideal world. And it was too bad, Kit thought, exiting the shop. Bridget might have talked to her if they were. Kit might have been able to trust her. And neither of them would have to fear a man with a whole different sort of thrust-corrupted, soured, rotting ... and seemingly unstoppable.

Even now ... she [Kit] still had a need to believe that most people, that most of life, was good. That belief was a sort of strength, too.

Love isn't just worth remembering and saving. True love is what saves us all.

The only bone in my body he ever loved was his.

Do I seem like the white-picket-fence sort of girl to you, Carl?" "No, you seem like the blood-soaked-walls kind of girl to me.

...you've been rooked. You know,you got the dust off. Killed. Murdered. Clipped. It's a rough deal, but you've had some good times, right?

Looks can't hide your true identity. It's the eyes that give you away ... the soul behind them. The intent. The Shadows.

There's this mental illness, right? It's called 'anhedonia.' It means 'without pleasure.' You can look it up, though all you really need to do is look around." She motioned to the door the other women had disappeared through, and to the world at large. "A good deal of people, mostly women, spend their entire lives in this state. It's a sort of half-death. But if you recognize this, you can fix it...You focus on bliss. Small pleasures. Fill your day with as many as you can fit into twenty-four hours. You devote every possible moment not to fulfilling another person-a man-but yourself."-Suzanne
"Sounds hedonistic"- Joanna
"But once you can do this, you start attracting everyone to you. You dont need compare yourself to some other girl, no matter how young or firm or perky she is.....Trust me. A woman like this, one at her best? We're the color of the world. We're the light and the beauty. So focus on your pleasure, and the man you want can't help but realize...that he may be a prince...but your a goddess.-Suzanne

...a companion had seemed unnecessary fuel when her body still burned at the core, waiting to ignite. But now, with the wind blowing icicles through her [Kit] veins, it felt like she, too, was in the grave. All her nuclear energy had been snuffed like a match between the night's icy fingers.

People created chaos, not places, and they were damned good at it no matter where they lived. And when this glittering gem of a city teamed up with the world's oldest profession, fantasy piled atop fantasy; it could convince anyone that impulse was a virtue, not a vice.

'You love her without willing it or wanting it, and that is the most exquisite pain of all.'

'Plenty of men are good at acquiring money and cars and things, but only a few have real forward motion. You know. Thrust.'

Chemistry was such a strange thing. I'd be willing to bet even Micah couldn't tell me why hundreds of men could leave me cold, while this one could string me along forever with only a smile.

So. You're a fallen angel." She folded her arms.
"I'm not fallen," he said roughly.
"Then what are you?"
He shrugged. "Busted.

She needed facts. Facts were bricks. Maybe she could build herself a wall with them, too, one tall and wide and strong enough to keep her alive when he was gone.

'It's much easier to destroy a life than it is to live one.'

People do lie to themselves, and they get away with it because every action affirms and reaffirms their perception. That's the power of the human mind. that's the power of thought, which is nothing more- and nothing less- than energy. And when you have a particularly powerful mind, extraordinary things can happen.

Are angels supposed to call humans Commies?

Why does so much of life have to be about letting go?

'I scrape under a nail and I pull out dirt. I pull off an overlay and I smell urine. It's the rot of their lives seeping into their nailbeds, you see? They can fix their hair and paint their nails and run on a treadmill until they're anorexia's poster child, but they can't fix their lives ... lives of rotting perfection.'

I wasn't heading toward a future I wanted as much as I was running away from one I didn't.

Most people were oblivious to the luck already bestowed upon them. I'd certainly been guilty of it.

What would become of me if I was never truly seen again? - Joanna

Charis sipped, smiling back. " ... I saw God everywhere."
Grif narrowed his eyes. "Really?"
She nodded and leaned close. "We were actually pen pals. I'd write Him letters in Latin and leave them in my closet."
"Why the closet?"
She shrugged. "Because He didn't appear after I set my front yard's bushes on fire, so I decided He was shy.

'Sex drives us, love or no love. Power or no power. Money or no money. It's the most powerful drug in the world. Some pay for it. Some die for it.'