Quotes from Rachel Hartman

Thou mayest reach Heaven only by the mercy of the fallen.

So if the Infernum is an empy interior, what's Heaven in their conception?" I asked, nudging him. "A second inside-out house, inside, or rather 'outside' the first," he said. "If you cross its threshold, you realize our world, for all its wonder, has been but a shdow, another kind of empitness. Heaven is more than this.

The flesh is but a sack of goo, a feast for worms to delve into. Remember, mortal, as you strive, that you, ambitious goo, must also die.

Quootla had a suffix, - utl , that could be glued to the end of anything—nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, small rodents—and meant the word itself plus its opposite, simultaneously. It didn't always translate into Goreddi. Time/no-time almost made sense; blue/orange or fall/rise or dog/whatever-the-opposite-of-dog-is were perfectly intelligible in Quootla but boggling to nearly everyone else.

I saw what they thought of you," said Mother Philomela, her voice gentling. "I rejoiced that you'd struck out on your own, but you've a long way to go still. Your kindness toward this one, when you needn't have troubled yourself"—she gestured at Griss—"shows me the true heart of you. Your credo goes further than you realized: walk on, yes, but don't walk past people who need you. Uncurl yourself so you can see them and respond.

That's why this is important: because it's impossible.

But are you finding monastic history a very compelling reason to live?" "I'm not human," he said. "I don't require a reason to live. Living is my default condition." I couldn't help it; I laughed, and tears welled in my eyes. That answer was quintessentially Orma, distilled to his elemental Orma-ness.

Sin is etched into women's very form. To the devil with her form, then.

Only when we have carved you into pieces can you be whole again.

The sun began to rise in earnest; Tess loved the way it illuminated treetops first, turning the foliage white-gold. The sky behind was warmly blue, and in the west a gibbous moon lingered in the branches like a pale fish caught in a net. Like a delicious secret. Tess blew it a cheeky kiss.

Once you glimpsed the truth about yourself, your understanding was complete and you could finally be at piece.

What's a mother for but to be blamed?

But do not make the mistake, Seraphina, of supposing that suffering ennobles anyone.

You were naming my life, which is similar but not identical to saving. We name something to make it real, to give it meaning. You can name my life and I might still die. Those aren't mutually exclusive.

you twist logic to your own purposes." "It's a lawyer's duty," sniffed Phloxia,

Don't be afraid. We're walking away from death, not toward it. Death is going back.

Belief was uniquely human.

our shadows stretched before us across the surface of the world.

She should hold on to the memories she didn't want to remember. And then, maybe, she could finally let them go.

A keen wit stabs harder than a finely honed argument.

Swept away was a fortuitous choice of words: it made her mad. She'd been swept away once—she'd let herself be, hoped and desired to be; that's how it always went in romantic stories. She'd never be that passive again. It was far, far better to choose,

We try to do right, and we ... we ... they gang up on us, fear and pain and revenge and ... and then we find we've done wrong.

I couldn't work out how to get home. Someone moved the mountains.

How could he forgive her if he didn't know she'd wronged him? How could she assuage her guilt without his forgiveness?