Quotes from Cherie Priest

Dude, I think I've solved the next riddle! Meet me tomorrow morning for breakfast. Seriously. Breakfast. If your butt isn't out of bed by ten o'clock, I'm coming up there with a Taser and a pot of coffee. – May (on Trick's voicemail)

I bet you a million dollars, that guy was the jackdaw!" "Oh, crap, I bet you're right," he muttered in response. "He's the stupid bird.

You have a really warped relationship with technology. – May

He smiled at May and tilted his head ever so slightly, and he said the only thing she wanted to hear in the whole world: "The princess has asked to see you.

I knew you'd come, once you saw the site," Libby said. "I knew you'd find me.

We'll fix that," May declared. Libby giggled at her. "What? I totally mean it." "I know. That's not what's funny: Your accent came back hard-core." "Shut up! No, it didn't," May giggled back.

She put her head down on Libby's lap, and stared up at her eyes – which stared back down at her with a worried expression. "Hang in there, May. There's some blood, but it's not that bad. You're going to be fine." She grinned. "I'm already fine. Everything is.

But women her age, barely out of their teens and with the whole world before them, they haven't yet had time to lose the things they love. Every affair is a fairy tale or a tragedy, and either one is fine so long as the story is good. Every love is all or nothing, and even their "nothings" are poetry. They don't yet know how the years fade and stretch the highs and the lows, wearing them thin, making them vulnerable. They haven't yet known much of death.

I had an irritating flash of nervousness, wondering if he was right outside—or across the street, or downstairs, or hiding in a closet. Because I couldn't stop myself, I rushed to the hall closet and flung it open to make sure. Packed

Meanwhile, me and Adrian will head for Atlanta, where everything will go smoothly and no one will get hurt, and everyone will have a productive time learning a great many useful things.

I didn't really think this poor woman was out to destroy the world. You have to be crazier than just schizophrenic to have an interest in that kind of thing. Usually you have to be a religious nut, too.

Give me that power, and I'll use it against you. I'll be your Madonna. I'll be your queen. And I'll have your head if it's the last thing I ever do.

Adrian said, "You sure know how to win friends and influence people." "That's why they call me Raylene. It's Greek for 'charming.' " "You're so full of shit," he observed.

Every day," she'd told him, "you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it.

Fuck you," he said, resorting to that last argument of vice presidents.

I don't think I've ever met any Mexicans before." "They're tyrants, and imperialists, every last one of them." If he'd been holding any more tobacco in his lip, he no doubt would've used it to chase the sentence out of his mouth. "And I guess you've talked to every last one of them, to be so sure of that.

I think I like you just fine, Red. Half the men in this city would be god-awful horrified at the thought of a woman working alongside 'em, much less a woman of my years. But you didn't even think twice about it—just assumed I was along for the working. I like that." Huey sighed. "He's not noble. He's lazy." "Lazy, noble, I don't care.

Every day," she'd told him, "you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it." At the time, he'd found it cynical. Now he honestly found it helpful — if for no other reason than he knew it was normal and he knew he wasn't alone.

palatable. Easier to overlook. Forgotten, or at least smoothed into some pearl-like blandness, if not a thing of beauty.

Sometimes you get a good eyeful of a man-sized action figure—and he knows what you are, and what you can do … and you know what he is, and what he's done before, or what he's helping other people do. And you just can't stand it because for all his bluster and bullshit he's weak and horrible, and cowardly, and if he caught you, he'd do terrible things to you—the kinds of things that were done to Ian and Isabelle.

That ought to make his face, or the sound of his voice, more precious to her mind, but strangely, this wasn't so. What was left in his absence was an empty, sorrowful discomfort. She wondered if it wouldn't eventually grow dull or dim if she worried at it enough, or softened and more

Every day,' she told him, 'you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it.' At the time, he'd found it cynical. Now he honestly found it helpful — if for no other reason than he knew it was normal and he knew he wasn't alone.

Everybody knows 'technically' is the best kind of correct.

Above me, the moon spun low across the sky and a few watery clouds hung from the stars like cobwebs. In