Home > Work > Black Heart (Curse Workers, #3)
21 " That's the problem with temptation. It's so damn tempting. "
― Holly Black , Black Heart (Curse Workers, #3)
22 " Mirroring behavior. When a mark takes a drink from his water glass, so should you. When he smiles, so should you. Keep it subtle, rather than creepy, and it’s a good technique. "
23 " The funny thing about good people—people like Daneca—is that they really honestly don’t get the impulse toward evil. They have an incredibly hard time reconciling with the idea that a person who makes them smile can still be capable of terrible things. Which is why, although she’s accusing me of being a murderer, she seems more annoyed than actually worried about getting murdered. Daneca seems to persist in a belief that if I would just listen and understand how bad my bad choices are, I’d stop making them. "
24 " This is never going to be over,” I shout. “Someone will always be after me. There’s always consequences. Well, BRING IT. I am done with being afraid, and I am done with you. "
25 " You set me up," I say. "One big con. You can't blame me because I turned out not to be gullible enough. You can't blame the mark. That's not how it works. Have some respect for the nature of the game. "
26 " There’s something about her—Cassel, I have met many evil men and women in my life. I have made deals with them, drank with them. I have done things that I myself have difficulty reconciling—terrible things. But I have never known anyone like your mother. She is a person without limits—or if she has any, she hasn’t found them yet. She never needs to reconcile anything. "
27 " A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. "
28 " It's okay," he informs me. "Your grandfather is teaching me how to play poker." If I know Grandad, that means what he'll really be teaching Sam is how to cheat. "
29 " Really it was a pretty good talk. About the best I could expect from my sociopath amnesiac jerk of an older brother. "
30 " God, I hate you,” she says. “So much. Why do boys think that it will be better to lie and tell a girl how much they loved her and how they only dumped her for her own good? That they only tried to rearrange her brain for her own good? Does it make you feel better, Cassel? Does it? Because from my perspective, it really sucks. "
31 " I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don't think I'm so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without ever really being aware of it--a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking. I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure when it will come. "
32 " More and more I feel like the boy who cut off his nose to spite his face. "
33 " That’s family for you. Can’t live with them; can’t murder them. Unless Barron rats me out to Yulikova. Then I really might. "
34 " You’re a liar, Cassel Sharpe. A lying liar who lies. "
35 " If you don’t know why you’re apologizing, your apology probably sucks. "
36 " The more you love her, the crazier you get. My love was great. My crimes were greater. "
37 " His eyes look too bright, the way the do in people who are in love, people who are enraged, and people who are completely bonkers. "
38 " Do you know what the Turkish say about coffee? It should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. "
39 " Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I'm a slug. "
40 " There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she'll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue. "