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41 " Through it all, she holds eye contact like it's a lifeline, although only the devil dead on his throne knows which one of them needs saving more. "
― Cassandra Khaw , The All-Consuming World
42 " She watches Verdigris from the bed, mouth full of the right words, all of them stillborn. "
43 " Certain ideas are meant for profanation: the concept of other people’s property being sacred for one. But this kind of trauma? No, that’s holy. The past is a reliquary you keep buried unless told otherwise by the person who interred that hurt-stained horror. "
44 " Rita flashes a winning smile down at the dog she calls Maya and good mutt that she is, Maya is immediately suffused by joy, chemical opiate of the chronically codependent. "
45 " Aren't you worried we'll take a swing at your favorite person while you're out?’ says Constance with detached ritual. ‘No,’ says Maya, without hesitation, because like Circe, like any witch from any old fairy tale, Rita has them all under her spell, and until someone can kiss the wickedness from Rita's teeth, they'll be her dogs until the world breaks like a heart. ‘Not at all. "
46 " The brain, pressed to contain every life experience, knows better than to do so. Instead of retaining every memory, it makes composites, deriving assumptions from repeated examples, and flattens decades into annotated summaries. "
47 " Finally, when Maya was so sure that Reyha’s composure is bulletproof, it fissures. It cracks along the bend of her mouth, her forehead. To Maya’s surprise, she experiences no triumph, only an apostate’s abashedness, like she’d defaced a god of small yet precious things. "
48 " Maya is older than the first sin, but she’s got nothing on Reyha, nothing on a life lived calm as deep water. "
49 " Compassion, like everything else, can be worn dull by rough use. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Nothing But Blackened Teeth
50 " I didn’t know someone else’s pain could have a texture, a bite, a gelatinousness you could hold in your teeth, but I could almost gnaw on Phillip’s dying. "
51 " ...and his kindness had a kind of teeth to it, had subtitles... he said it with so much sympathy too. Too much, in fact, his expression greasy with it. "
52 " The words fly like kicks, hard and loose, ugly swings with no artistry at all, just raw emotion. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Hammers on Bone (Persons Non Grata, #1)
53 " Kill, defeather, and roast a Fury. Murder, process, and broil a Fury with pickled shiitakes and spicy miso. Execute, unrobe, and make Fury rendang. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef
54 " You know how they say you never forget how to ride a bike? Magic's like that. Deeper, even. The knowledge of it inks itself on the inside of your bones, as does the practice, the methodology of execution. You can't unlearn it anymore than you unlearn the symbiosis of ventricle and aorta. "
― Cassandra Khaw
55 " We navigate by capitalism. Always had, probably always will. And one of the things about capitalism is it demands we think of our lives as in deficit. Not enough time, not enough material possessions, not enough luxuries. Not enough anything. Because contentment doesn't sell. Desire does. "
56 " prickles, rust-edged, dangerous. “You’d be amazed how many people pray for temporary salvation. Nothing lasting. Nothing that might require a lifetime of devotion. Something small. Something to get them by for the next day, the next week. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Food of the Gods
57 " Black goes with everything, especially blood stains. "
58 " You can’t move forward when someone keeps dragging you back. "
59 " The street is getting dark, the pavement tiger-striped by halogen. It wears the fog like a dame’s best scarf, slightly jaunty, with an edge of challenge. "
60 " You humans have an aphorism about atheists and foxholes, do you not? A belief that death can make believers of the faithless? "