Karou Quotes

Tomorrow they will start the apocalypse.
Tonight, they let themselves look at each other, just for a little while. ~ Laini Taylor

Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf! ~ Laini Taylor

I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free. ~ Laini Taylor

Alas. I am not an option. ~ Laini Taylor

I don't know many rules to live by,' he'd said. 'But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles
drug or tattoo
and ... no inessential penises either.'
'Inessential penises?' Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. 'Is there any such thing as an essential one?'
'When an essential one comes along, you'll know,' he'd replied. ~ Laini Taylor

This, she thought, isn't just for today. It's for everything. For the heartache that still felt like a punch in the gut each time it struck, fresh as new, at unpredictable moments; for the smiling lies and the mental images she couldn't shake; for the shame of having been so naive.
For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve - like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.
And this, Karou thought, no longer smiling, is for the irretrievable. ~ Laini Taylor

Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles - drug or tattoo - and ... no inessential penises, either." "Inessential penises?" Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. "Is there any such thing as an essential one? ~ Laini Taylor

Finding Akiva's door still closed, Liraz gave a chuff of derision and didn't knock but only crashed it open and glared at the sight that greeted them. Akiva and Karou, eyes bleary with desire, facing each other on a stone slab and touching, hands to hearts ... "Well," Liraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. "At least you still have your clothes on. ~ Laini Taylor

Walking through, Karou experienced it all in a rush of old and new experience that was like the convergence of two swift rivers: Madrigal's memory and Karou's marvel, merging at every step. ~ Laini Taylor

Nd when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn't realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in. ~ Laini Taylor

You are a conniving, deceitful hussy. I stand in awe."
"You're sitting."
"I sit in awe. ~ Laini Taylor

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn't stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have been the forced inversion of laughter-like a soul pulled inside out to reveal its rawest meats. ~ Laini Taylor

Is life worth keeping on with, whatever happens?" Was she talking about living broken, living with loss? Did she count his loss a real one, and did she really want to know or was there a barb in this somewhere? Sometimes, Akiva felt like he didn't know his sister at all. "Yes," he said, wary, thinking of the thurible, and Karou. "As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better."
"Or worse," said Liraz.
"Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse. ~ Laini Taylor

He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou, and whatever it was, it was as sweet as a patch of sun on a glossy floor and, like a cat, she just wanted to curl up in it. ~ Laini Taylor

Elemental. Love is an element, Karou remembered from a long, long time ago, and she felt like she was floating. ~ Laini Taylor

Karou was, simply, lovely. Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx. Beyond merely pretty, her face was vibrantly alive, her gaze always sparking and luminous, and she had a birdlike way of cocking her head, her lips pressed together while her dark eyes danced, that hinted at secrets and mysteries. ~ Laini Taylor

Cake for later, cake as a way of life. ~ Laini Taylor

You're doing so well." At being Thiago, she meant. "It's a little eerie."
"Eerie," he repeated.
"Convincing. A few times I almost forgot
"
He didn't let her finish. "Don't forget. Not ever. Not for a second." He drew in breath. "Please."
So much behind that word. Please don't forget I'm not a monster. Please don't forget what I gave up. Please don't forget me. ~ Laini Taylor

I came back to find you," Akiva said. "I don't know why. Karou. Karou. I don't know why." His voice was so faint she could barely hear him. "Just to find you and be in the world that you're in ... ~ Laini Taylor

Maybe she was losing her mind. or maybe ... maybe she was finding it. ~ Laini Taylor

He watched her with a hopeful, piercing scrutiny that made her tingle, she felt so ... seen. ~ Laini Taylor

Karou loved Zuzana for her willingness to play out such silliness on a long kite string. ~ Laini Taylor

A pause came between them, and it was so full of Akiva that Karou imagined she could smell him. ~ Laini Taylor

As far back as she could remember, a phantom life had mocked her with its impenetrable "something else," but now it was the opposite. Here, in the circle of Akiva's presence, even as they spoke of war and siege and enduring enmity, she felt herself being drawn into the warm absoluteness and rightness of him, like he was both place and person and, contrary to all reason, exactly where she was supposed to be. ~ Laini Taylor

Karou wasn't a prize to win; that wasn't why he was here. She was a woman and would choose her own life. He was here to do what he could, whatever he could, that she might have a life to choose, one day. Whoever and whatever that included was her own affair. ~ Laini Taylor

War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning. ~ Laini Taylor

I ... I sang," she whispered, "if that matters," and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul into her canteen, because she hadn't known what else to do.
The singing wouldn't have mattered, but she wasn't going to tell Liraz that. If Ziri's soul was in that canteen, Karou would happily learn whatever song Liraz had sung and make it part of her resurrection ritual forever, just so that the angel would never feel that she'd been foolish. ~ Laini Taylor

He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and ... love ... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul. ~ Laini Taylor

Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it-burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her. ~ Laini Taylor

Akiva felt the tilt of the world trying to tip him forward: to be nearer to her
nearer and touching
as though that were the only state of rest, and every other action and movement were geared to achieving it. ~ Laini Taylor

Her train came, and she wrestled her burden through the doors, trying not to think too much about what was in it, or the magnificent life that had been ended somewhere in Africa, though probably not recently. These tusks were massive, and Karou happened to know that elephant tusks rarely grew so big anymore - poachers had seen to that. By killing all the biggest bulls, they'd altered the elephant gene pool. ~ Laini Taylor

Love is a luxury."
"No. Love is an element."
An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on. ~ Laini Taylor

Your body is nothing but an envelope, Karou. Your soul is another matter, and is not, as far as I know, in any immediate danger."
"An envelope?" She didn't like to think of her body as an envelope
something others might be able to open up and rifle through, remove things from like so many clipped coupons.
"I assumed you felt the same way," he'd said. "The way you scribble on it."
Brimstone didn't approve of her tattoos, which was funny, since he was responsible for her first, the eyes on her palms. ~ Laini Taylor

I can touch you," she marveled, and she couldn't
or at least didn't
resist the urge to further prove it by sliding her palm over the hot-smooth terrain of his chest until she felt as if she were holding his heartbeat in her hand.
"As much as you want," he said, and there was a trembling in him, but it wasn't from pain. ~ Laini Taylor

Don't I deserve to finally be free of you? ~ Laini Taylor

Man," amended Karou, rising and
bending again in mock prayer. "Thank
you, gods, for this man - " She interrupted herself to ask Zuzana, in her normal voice, "Wait. Does that make you a woman?"
She only meant that it was strange to
go from thinking of Zuzana - and herself, too - as a girl to a woman. It just sounded weirdly old. But Zuzana's response, employing full eyebrow power in the service of lechery, was, "Why, yes, since you ask. This man did make me a woman. It hurt like holy hell at first, but it's gotten better." She grinned like an anime character. "So. Much. Better."
Poor Mik blushed like sunburn, and
Karou clamped her hands over her ears.
"La la la!" she sang, and when Ziri asked her what they were saying, she blushed, too, and did not explain - which only made him blush in turn, when he grasped the probable subject matter. ~ Laini Taylor

My tiny scary friend is coming ~ Laini Taylor

She experienced a queer collision of reactions these days. Karou's were foremost, and the most immediate, but Madrigal's were hers, too: her two selves, coming together with a strange kind of vibration. It's wasn't disharmony, exactly. ~ Laini Taylor

I have never in my life typed a heart symbol. Those are for milquetoast girls. Karou will probably think my phone's been stolen – or possibly my body, by a lovelorn alien. I send the text anyway.
This is what comes back: …who is this?? ~ Laini Taylor

She'd spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened
apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won
some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it
but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies. Food, weapons, happiness.
With hope that the weapons could in time vanish from the picture. ~ Laini Taylor

She didn't need a Taser; she was more than capable of defending herself without electricity. She'd had an unusual education. ~ Laini Taylor

Karou enjoyed the idea that you could "believe what you want," as though reality were a buffet line. If only. Triple helpings of cake, please. ~ Laini Taylor

An angel lay dying in the mist. Once upon a time.
And the devil should have finished him off without a second thought.
But she hadn't. And if she had? Karou had wondered it a hundred different ways. She'd even wished for it, in her blackest grief at the Kasbah, when all she could see was the death that had come of her mercy.
If she'd killed Akiva that day, or even just let him die, the war would have ground on unbroken. Another thousand years? Maybe. But she hadn't, and it hadn't. "The age of wars is over," Akiva had just said, and even as Karou saw what she saw and no possibility of mistake, and even as her whole being gathered itself into a scream, her heart defied it. The age of wars was over, and Akiva would not die like this.
The blade entered his heart. ~ Laini Taylor

Zuzana arched an eyebrow. She was a master of the eyebrow arch, and Karou envied her for it. Her own eyebrows did not function independently of each other, which handicapped her expressions of suspicion and disdain. ~ Laini Taylor

Let's just get this out of the way so I can relax. Karou, your friends aren't going to eat us, are they?"
No, Karou thought. They are not. She whispered back, "I don't think so. But try not to look delicious, okay? ~ Laini Taylor

No, tiny violent one. ~ Laini Taylor

The despair was entire, complete as a possession, but fleeting. It released her, and was gone, but it left Karou gutted, guttered, feeling for all the world like…

…a candle flame extinguished by a scream. ~ Laini Taylor

Wasn't that what she had always wanted, to be chosen? ~ Laini Taylor

Nerves," Mik told Karou.
"Bad?"
"Terrible." Stepping up behind Zuzana, he bent down to enfold her in a spoon-hug. "Ferociously, dreadfully awful. She's unbearable. You take her. I've had enough."
Zuzana batted at him, then squealed as he buried his face in the curve of her throat and made exaggerated kissing noises. ~ Laini Taylor

Rushing, like wind through a door, and Karou was the door, and the wind was coming home, and she as also the wind. She was all: wind and home and door. She rushed into herself and was filled. She let herself in and was full. ~ Laini Taylor

Karou had things to do. Sometimes they took a few hours; other times, she was gone for days and returned weary and disheveled, maybe pale, maybe sunburned, or with a limp, or possibly a bite mark, and once with an unshakable fever that had turned out to be malaria. ~ Laini Taylor

Soon, everything else would come rushing at him. Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once - the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him - but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva only knew this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever.
Karou was alive. ~ Laini Taylor

From: Zuzana Subject: Miss Radio Silence To: Karou ~ Laini Taylor

Can you believe him? Does he think if he just dangle his boy bits at you like a cat toy you'll go scampering after him?"
"Of course he thinks that," said Karou. "This is his idea of a romantic gesture. ~ Laini Taylor

And for the first time in a long, long time, Karou felt the truth of it. Her heart was not wrong. ~ Laini Taylor

Be that cat! she reminded herself. The one that stayed out of reach, and never - ever purred. ~ Laini Taylor

Just then, lit only by the flicker of his wings,the sight of him was so..right somehow. He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou ~ Laini Taylor

Karou who had, a lifetime past, begun this story on a battlefield, when she knelt beside a dying angel and smiled. You could trace a line from the beach at Bullfinch, through everything that had happened since - lives ended and begun, wars won and lost, love and wishbones and rage and regret and deception and despair and always, somehow, hope - and end up right here, in this cave in the Adelphas Mountains, in this company. ~ Laini Taylor