Karen Marie Moning Quotes

This isn't what I wanted. This isn't what I would have chosen. You must know that. It's important you know that. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Daddy looked at her hard, and right before my eyes, he changed. I watched him inflate again, shake off his own emotions and puff himself up for her. Become her man. Her rock. I smiled. I loved him so much. He'd dragged mom kicking and screaming from grief once before and I knew I could rest easy that he would never let grief steal her from him again. No matter what happened to me. ~ Karen Marie Moning

My philosophy is pretty simple – any day nobody's trying to kill me is a good day in my book. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Often, it was only the bold, fearless, risky action that had any hope of circumventing impending doom, as if Fate was amused by the colorfully unexpected, and while she was laughing, one might slip changes past the pernicious bitch. ~ Karen Marie Moning

If only [love] could be turned off. It's not a faucet. Love's a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it- and then only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it's done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Bold. Ruthless. Energy. Action. Tenacity. Hunger. That was what B-R-E-A-T-H was. ~ Karen Marie Moning

And there you have it ... if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I am stretched on your grave and will lie there forever ... ~ Karen Marie Moning

There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies. ~ Karen Marie Moning

He just didn't look like the kind of creep that would messily murder a woman in her hotel room; he looked like the kind of creep that could line her up in the sights of an assassins rifle without a shred of emotion. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Let's get something straight, MacKeltar. I am not going home with you. I am not going to bed with you, and I am not wasting one more moment arguing with you."
"I promise not to mock you when you change your mind, lass. ~ Karen Marie Moning

An ait a bhfuil do chroi is ann a thabharfas do chosa thu.(your feet will bring you to where your heart is.) ~ Karen Marie Moning

When we're kids," Dancer said, "we're made of steel. And we think we're invincible but stuff happens and that steel gets stretched and pulled and twisted into impossible shapes. Most people are torn apart by the time they're married and have kids of their own. But some people, the few, figure out how to let that steel heat and bend. And in all the places other people break, they get stronger. ~ Karen Marie Moning

And he would never have instructed her to tell his past self such a story and expected himself to believe it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Now it's not just my lip you'll be needing to kiss if you're wishing to make amends with me, Irish. ~ Karen Marie Moning

There's a fine line between being stupid and knowing you have to test your limits if you want to do any real living at all. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You're early."
I give him a mutinous look. Of course he thinks my being early is about him. It's not. Mac was at Chester's last night at eight. I think she's hunting me. Since I can't be late to avoid her, I have to be early. "Watch broke. Thought I was on time."
"You don't wear a watch."
"See? I knew I had a problem. I'll just dash out and get one. Be back tomorrow. On time. ~ Karen Marie Moning

He turned his face to mine, looked down. Handsome, chilling man. His eyes were the clearest I'd ever seen. This was a man that suffered no conflicts with himself. He had no problems being what he was.
We stared at each other. "Black looks good on you," he murmured. "Has Barrons seen you like this? ~ Karen Marie Moning

Emotion apparently made fools of even geniuses. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Well, forgive the fuck out of me for being shocked senseless when I realized he wasn't dead. Why didn't you tell me he was the beast, Ryodan? Why did we have to kill him? I know it's not because he can't control himself when he's the beast. He controlled himself last night when he rescued me from the Book. He can change at will, can't he? What happened in the Silvers? Does the place have some kind of effect on you, make you uncontrollable?"
I almost slapped myself in the forehead. Barrons had told me that the reason he tattooed himself with black and red protection runes was because using dark magic called a price due, unless you took measures to protect yourself against the backlash. Did using IYD require the blackest kind of magic to make it work? Would it grant his demand to magically transport him to me no matter where I was but devolve him into the darkest, most savage version of himself as the price?
"It was because of how he got there, wasn't it?" I said. "The spell you two worked sent him to me like was it was supposed to, but the cost was that it turned him into the lowest common denominator of himself. An insane killing machine. Which he figured was all right, because if I was dying, I'd probably need a killing machine around. A champion to show up and decimate all my enemies. That was it, wasn't it?"
Ryodan had gone completely still. Not a muscle twitched. I wasn't sure he was breathing.
"He knew what would happen if I pressed IYD, and he made ~ Karen Marie Moning

For a moment there he hadn't looked dark, forbidding, and cold, but dark, forbidding, and ... warm. In fact, when he'd laughed he'd looked ... well ... kind of hot. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You'll never be just anything. A tsunami can never be 'just' a wave."
"Get off my chin."
"I like that about you. Waves are banal. Tsunamis reshape the Earth. Under the right circumstances, even entire civilizations."
I blink.
"You're going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani. ~ Karen Marie Moning

We Irish know how to make the most of the times of plenty, for sure enough they'll be famine again. ~ Karen Marie Moning

His coworker was velvety-skinned, a sexy boy-on-the-cusp-of man. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I want us to be ... what is your word? Friends."
"Psychotic rapists don't have friends."
"I was unaware you were a psychotic rapists or I would not have offered."
(Mac & V'lane) ~ Karen Marie Moning

He bristles with impatience. I feel the lust rolling off him, the violence beneath it.
"You said you wanted something. What is it, Ms. Lane?"
I smile coolly. "The deed to my bookstore, Barrons. What else? ~ Karen Marie Moning

Observations," he says.
"Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes." They'd been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery.
He gives me a sidewise look. "Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Not threatening - warning. I haven't been hunting it this long and gotten this close to let anyone get in my way and fuck things up. There are two kinds of people in this world, Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost, and those who are walking victims." He pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I felt his tongue where my pulse fluttered, tracing my vein. "You, Ms. Lane, are a victim, a lamb in a city of wolves. I'll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Was that the sum total of my exsitence? I didn't get the erudition of 'I think therefore I am.'
Instead I got 'I am, therefore I want to fuck Jericho Barrons. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Best way to stay out from under a microscope is to keep turning it around on the person trying to view you through it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

There are a few things a hunting man can't do without. His bloodhound is one of them. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You can't help yourself, can you? You think the only thing to do with a parade is rain on it. Some people know to enjoy the parade because, dude, the rain always comes back. ~ Karen Marie Moning

All my life, up until that moment, I'd had a warm, protective blanket wrapped around me, knitted of aunts and uncles, purled of first and second and third cousins, knot-tied with grandmas and grandpas and greats. That blanket had just dropped from my shoulders. I felt cold, lost and alone. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Caring is love. And love fights! Love doesn't look for the path of least resistance. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I heard - " I began.
"I let you hear," he cut me off.
I shut my mouth, closed the door, and leaned back against it. The corners of his lips turned up as if at some private amusement, and for a moment I thought we were having one of those silent conversations.
You think it's safe to close yourself in with the Beast?
If you think I'm afraid of you, you're wrong.
You should be afraid.
Maybe you should be afraid of me. Go ahead, piss me off, Barrons. See what happens.
Little girl thinks she's all grown up now.
His mouth moved into a smile that I've grown familiar with over the past few months, shaped of competing tensions: part mockery, part pissed off, and part turned on. Men are so complicated. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You think you're going to chain me to a wall then stand here and tell me why it's okay that I am the way I am? That because of all the crap folks put me through when I was young it's all right that I turned out like this?
Dude, I don't have a problem with how I turned out. I like me. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I've got soul but I'm not a soldier ~ Karen Marie Moning

He closes his hand around mine and I hold on. I like his hand. It's big and holds easy but sure. It's the kind of hold that says, I got you if you want me, but I'll let you go if you feel like running for a while. ~ Karen Marie Moning

After an eternity of grief and regret, he held the only thing he'd ever wanted as much as he wanted to be God. A second chance. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Life is not black and white. The closes we ever get to either of those colors is wearing them. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Life didn't explode in the sunshine and pretty places. Life took the strongest root with a little bit of rain and with a whole lot of shit for fertilizer. Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I see you, Yi-yi."
She smiled. Everything she knew about love she'd learned from this pudgy, cranky, manic-depressive, binge-eating beast that had been her companion through hell and back, too many times to count. He alone had protected her, loved her, fought for her, taught her to believe that life was worth living, even if there was no one there to see you living it.
"I see you, too, Shazam. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The kiss he gave her was not meant to seduce, it was meant to mark a woman's soul, and it was working. Dominant like the man, hungry, demanding. Beckoning forth the secret Chloe that harbored hunger every bit as deep as his. He was a dark, seductive shadow, all around her, and she was drowning in him. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I've tried to move [the sidhe-seers] during times of peace and quiet and had the luck of a broken mirror nailed beneath an upside-down horseshoe with a ladder nearby that a black cat just walked under. ~ Karen Marie Moning

He built his beloved a playground of infinite proportions, tucked away in a safe pocket of reality where she could stay for all time, unchanging. Unaging. She would be safe. Nothing and no one could ever hurt her. He would never have to worry that he might lose her. ~ Karen Marie Moning

By the time you work your way down the hierarchy to a brunette, you got yourself a woman who knows who she is, likes it enough that she ain't gonna change, and is probably gonna try to change you, if push comes to shove. Pushy, that's what brunettes are. Even the dainty, fragile-looking ones. ~ Karen Marie Moning

She knew her husband would never stray, so highly did he value that which he'd waited nearly six thousand years to know, so precious was it to him: love. She knew he would be there with her until the very end, that he would cherish each wrinkle, every line in her face, because in the final analysis they were not a negation of life but an affirmation of a life well lived. Proof positive of laughter and tears, of joy and grief, of passion, of living. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Mac," she shot over her shoulder, "one more thing, and if you tell Rowena I told you, I'll lie. But you need to know. There are no males among us. Never have been. Whatever your employer is, he's not one of us." I ~ Karen Marie Moning

I always get them to call me whatever I want. I'm always in control. Isn't much I like more than a beautiful woman tied to my bed while I make her come till she passes out. So what's my problem? ~ Karen Marie Moning

Kiss me as if you remember me. Inspire this wild god as once you did. Incite poetry and fire with your passion and perhaps I'll find a way. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I like women. I want them to feel good. It's practically been my mission in life. ~ Karen Marie Moning

My heart makes the decision without me and tries to get to her the fastest way possible. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Below me, inside me, there's a pit that's dark and comforting and quite completely insane. If I sink into it, I can be free of all torture. ~ Karen Marie Moning

What happens when a sheepdog gets bit by a wolf?"
"Duh. It becomes a wolf."
"No. It becomes a sheepdog that fights with the lawlessness and savagery of a wolf. ~ Karen Marie Moning

They say if you die in a dream, your heart stops in real life. I don't know if that's true. I've never known anyone who died in a dream to ask. Maybe because they're all dead. ~ Karen Marie Moning

It's funny the things people say when someone dies.
He's in a better place.
How do you know that?
Life goes on.
That's supposed to comfort me? I'm excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it's going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me.
Time heals.
No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn't a good thing. It's merely the wound's other face. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Solitude and inaction are unraveling me right down to the core. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I don't tell anybody about.
The observer ...
I live in terror that one day I won't get to be Dani again. ~ Karen Marie Moning

She glides through the night. He punches into it, a boxing glove with razor blades for knuckles. When she passes, the world is a better place. He leaves bloody footprints in a graveyard of bones. ~ Karen Marie Moning

And after I act as your intermediary and he takes you back to Faery, then what?"
"Then all will be made right, and I'll be invincible again."
She rolled her eyes. "I meant, what happens to me? While you may be the most important thing to your egotistical little self in your narcissistic little world, guess what - so am I in mine. ~ Karen Marie Moning

He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. "Lass, I have never lied to you. I adore you and there have never been any other women from the future here. And these"- he flung a tampon in the air- "cleaning swabs, I cannot fathom why they upset you so greatly, but I assure you I have never let the maids use them."
Lisa's brow furrowed. No man could be so stupid. "Cleaning Swabs?"
He snatched up a gun and jerked the barrel in her direction, and an unwrapped tampon shot out. It was coated with black from the slow corrosion of the steel. She eyed it for a moment, bent, and plucked it from the floor. "You clean your guns with these?"
He lowered the gun. "Is that not the purpose for which they were designed? I vow I could not conceive of another."
Didn't you read the box?"
There were too many words I didn't understand! ~ Karen Marie Moning

A lamb in a city of wolves. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Self-pity is wasted emotion. It merely prolongs whatever trauma you suffered by keeping it alive in your head. Dude, you survived it. Move on. ~ Karen Marie Moning

When Darroc returns, I know by the look in his eyes that I've chosen well. He thinks I picked black and red for him, the colors of his guard, the colors he has told me he selected for his future court. I chose black and red for the tattoos on Barrons' body. Tonight I wear my promise to him that I will make things right. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I've come to acknowledge the turd". ~ Karen Marie Moning

I was pissed-off walking. Or rather pissed-off sitting, tangled in crimson silk sheets that smelled like somebody'd been having a sexathon.
That would be me.
And that made me even madder. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Lust is absurd. It strikes in the strangest places at the oddest times. She doesn't even realize she's feeling it. She's erected a barricade of propriety and lies between us. I despise the type of woman she is. I loathe her soft pink innocence. My body doesn't concur. I wonder why her? ~ Karen Marie Moning

She studied the fabulous frame with its odd symbols, stroking the cool gold of it, trailing her hand down over the silvery glass. Inside the mirror, Cian raised his hand, too, and traced the path of her passage, making it appear as though their fingertips met. She felt only cold glass. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I hope they change my drugs soon. Whatever I'm on isn't working. ~ Karen Marie Moning

There was no lifeboat here in these
deep, killing waters, not even a lighthouse, marking the way back to shore with its soft amber promise.
There was only the storm of Barrons and the one I seemed to be, and if there were dark shapes moving in the waters beneath my feet that I should probably take a good hard look at and possibly reconsider trying to swim here, I didn't care. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Almost only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes. ~ Karen Marie Moning

A comfort zone can be a mental state:Belief in God is a lot of peoples's comfort zone. Dont get me wrong, I'm not knocking faith; I just dont think you should have it because it makes you feel safe. I think you should have it because you do. Because somewhere deep inside you, you know beyond equivocating that something greater, wiser and infinitely more loving than we're capable of understanding has a vested interested in the universe, in the way things turn out. Because you can feel that, as much as the forces of darkness might try to gain the upper hand, there is an Upper Hand. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The more excited I get, the more I vibrate."
"Now there's a thought," Lor says.
"If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says. ~ Karen Marie Moning

So"--he gestured impatiently--"when will you marry him?"
"Who?" She seethed, plucking at the folds of her gown. Clouds passed over the moon, momentarily obscuring him from her view.
His eerily disembodied voice was mildly reproaching. "Try to follow the conversation, lass. Quinn."
"By Odin's shaft--"
"Spear," he corrected with a hint of amusement in his voice. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I said, my phone."
I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They're too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.
I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.
Two males roar in unison.
"Ms. Lane, you will not close-"
"Mac, you will give me my f*ucking-"
The door hisses closed behind me. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I have no use for it. My will needs no amplifying. My will shapes worlds. The amulet was fashioned for one like you with no will of which to speak." "Just because we can't manipulate reality with our thoughts doesn't mean we don't have will. Maybe we do shape reality, just on a different scale, and you don't see it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Put me down. I can walk." "Nay. I've no desire for you to be master of your destiny in any manner, however small. You are too unpredictable." "I'm unpredictable?" "Aye." She was speechless a moment. Then she pinched his butt, hard. "Ow!" He smacked her bottom. "Ow!" she yelped. "Behave," he growled. "Tit for tat, lass. Remember that. ~ Karen Marie Moning

It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate."
"Now there's a thought," Lor says.
"If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says.
"Just saying, boss," Lor says. "You can't tell me you didn't think it, too."
I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don't care. "You can touch me if you want to," I say to Lor magnanimously. I'm so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I'm feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. "Check me out. It feels really cool."
All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan.
"He doesn't own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him? ~ Karen Marie Moning

Tell them, Gabrielle," Adam urged impatiently.
Blinking, Gabby nodded. "I have one of the, er… fairies here with me –"
"Tuatha Dé," Adam corrected irritably. "You're bloody well making me sound like Tinkerbell. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Barrons has something the rest of us don't have. I don't know what it is, but I feel it all the time, especially when we're standing close. Beneath the expensive clothes, unplaceable accent, and cultured veneer, there's something that never crawled all the way out of the swamp. It didn't want to. It likes it there. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Fear and doubt are major stampeders. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Immortals. Pains in the asses, every one of them. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Life's a choice: you can live in black and white, or you can live in colour. I'll take every shade of the rainbow and the gazillion in between! ~ Karen Marie Moning

I've never been nonplussed before but I know the definition and I imagine this must be what it feels like. It's not quite flummoxed, or bewildered. Words have subtle nuances. A year or two ago I might have been flabbergasted. This is a slightly different kind of stymied. Yes. I think it's nonplussed. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Actions talk. Words are worthless. You think to discover in me a vein of vulnerability, a marbling of sensitivity glimpsed only by you because you're special, so you can proclaim, "Look, Barrons' torturous past has made him a monster but only because he's suffered so much. It's understandable that he lives by no law but his own - a violent, bloody, conscienceless law - but the healing power of my love will restore his demolished humanity!"
Restore means to return a thing that was taken. Mine was not. ~ Karen Marie Moning

If you're trying to force the story to be a straight up romance, it's going to be weird for you. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Churches crack me up. They're like money, a conspiracy of faith. Like everyone agreed to believe that not only is there a God, but he comes down and checks on folks, so long as they hang in certain places, put up alters, burn lots of candles and incense, and perform sit-stand-kneel and other wacky rituals that'd make a coven of witches not look OCD. ~ Karen Marie Moning

There are ledgers. Those I kill. Those I reward."
"There are legends. You used to be one."
"I am a legend."
"Dani's a legend. Not you."
"This Dani appears to matter to you."
"Always."
"Perhaps you had a funny way of showing it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You can't go forward if you're looking backward. You run into walls that way. ~ Karen Marie Moning

She smiled radiantly at the shield, pretending it was Dageus. The three simple words just didn't seem like enough. Love was so much larger than words.
"I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you more than chocolate. I love you more than the whole world is big." She paused, thinking, searching for a way to explain what she felt. "I love you more than artifacts. I love you so much it makes my toes curl just thinking about it."
Pushing her hair back from her face, she donned her most sincere expression. "I love you."
"You can have the confounded shield if you love it that much, lass," Dageus said, sounding utterly bewildered. Chloe felt all the blood drain from her face. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Another flawless lie. I may not do it often but I shine at it like I do most things. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Och, woman," he said softly, "you show me Heaven and ask me to revisit Hell? Not now, sweet Jessica. Now is for us.
No grim thoughts. Only us . ~ Karen Marie Moning

I didn't say I didn't like you. 'Like' is such a puerile word. Mediocre people like things. The only question of any significant emotive content is: Can you live without it? ~ Karen Marie Moning

Hope you got your things together.'" I sang, stabbing a pillow with my spear. Feathers exploded into the air. "'Hope you are quite prepared to die!'" I spun in a dazzling whirl of lights, landed a killer back-kick on a phantom Shade, and simultaneously punched the magazine rack. "'Looks like we're in for nasty weather!'" I took a swan dive at a short, imaginary Shade, lunged up at a taller one -
- and froze.
Barrons stood inside the front door, dripping cool-world elegance.
I hadn't heard him come in over the music. He was leaning, shoulder against the wall, arms folded, watching me.
"'One eye is taken for an eye . . .'" I trailed off, deflating. I didn't need a mirror to know how stupid I looked. I regarded him sourly for a moment, then moved for the sound dock to turn it off. When I heard a choked sound behind me I spun, and shot him a hostile glare. He wore his usual expression of arrogance and boredom. I resumed my path for the sound dock, and heard it again. This time when I turned back, the corners of his mouth were twitching. I stared at him until they stopped.
I'd reached the sound dock, and just turned it off, when he exploded.
I whirled. "I didn't look that funny," I snapped.
His shoulders shook.
"Oh, come on! Stop it!"
He cleared his throat and stopped laughing. Then his gaze took a quick dart upward, fixed on my blazing MacHalo, and he lost it again. I don't know, maybe it was the brackets sticking out from the sides. ~ Karen Marie Moning

They would be together always. Soul mates. He would never be alone. Never get lost in madness, for she would never fail to find him and bring him back. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You're mine, Jessica. Do you ken that? Mine. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Like is an emotion. Emotions" - he raised a hand, made a fist, clenched it tightly - "are like holding water. You open your hand, there's nothing there. Better to be a weapon than a woman. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I just wished she'd stop forgetting me. Like she didn't want to remember me. Or maybe she wished she'd never had me. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The world can wait. I can't. ~ Karen Marie Moning

He is so beautiful that he makes a part of my soul weep. I don't understand those tears. They aren't like the ones I cry for Alina. They aren't made of water and salt. I think they're made of blood. ~ Karen Marie Moning