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1 " Zelda had a sudden impression that the palace was alive, an inhuman giant buried to its neck in the city, waiting for her with many blank eyes. Those emerald columns were its teeth. It waited for each new wave of lords and ate them each in turn, sucked their brains through small holes drilled in their skulls....What did the palace care for whose flag it flew, whose head sat on the shoulders of the statue on it's throne? It was patient, and hungry. It laughed in architecture. "
― Max Gladstone , Last Exit
2 " You pushed on that gap between the way the world was and the way the world could be, until, if you were strong and smart and pure and very lucky and very dumb, one day the gap grew teeth and opened its mouth and ate you. "
3 " She always said, "We do what we can."When they were on the road together, he thought that meant even small things are worth doing. Later, he realized what he first thought was a comforting slogan was actually a challenge: what CAN you do, really? Look at the world and ask yourself what it needs. Then look at yourself and ask what can I give, what sacrifices can I make, whom can I help?There's always a tank rolling down some street. You can't do everthing. But that doesn't forgive you for not doing what you can. "
4 " Monsters never died, they only slept a while. "
5 " Nobody ever needed a supernatural motive to be a dick. "
6 " you are thirstier than the French Foreign Legion, "
7 " It had seemed like a young river back when she was a dumb kid. "
8 " shame was a door to hate. "
9 " She did feel everything she’d said. The despair. Who wouldn’t, if they were paying attention? But you didn’t feel it all the time. You walled it up with purpose. With friendship. With vows and work. And you reminded yourself that it was not just you who felt this way, that there were others out there with their own pits and walls and vows and love and work, and you tried to let that make you kind. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t good. But she didn’t know another way. He said, “I’m sorry,” before she could. It felt as wrong to hear as it would have felt to say. They weren’t sorry. It was just hard. “Firewood.” “Yes,” she echoed. “Firewood. "
10 " The Bronx had been a pleasant place to walk before Robert Moses got his hands on it. To hear Sal tell the story, Moses had been the king of New York roads, a child of wealth who burrowed into government and, once he chewed through its outer shell, established himself in its rib cage, a sort of parasitic pontifex for a new Rome. "
11 " I’m scared all the time. Sometimes I think it must have been this way forever, everyone scared all the time, and maybe we grew up in one of the few moments in history when a few people weren’t. "
12 " Zelda’s eyes were so wide and so trusting. No trace of doubt that Sarah would fix this, because Sarah was her friend, and friends were omnipotent. Sarah would make everything okay. "
13 " Wounds healed, but scars remained. "
