Jude Duarte Quotes

“Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?” Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment. “No” I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. “Tell me.” “I can’t.”

“Many nights I drifted off to sleep to his rumbling voice reading from a book of battle strategy. And despite myself, despite what he’d done and what he was, I came to love him. It’s just not a comfortable kind of love.”

“Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.”

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”

I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?

“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

“If you hurt me, I wouldn’t cry. I would hurt you back.”

“Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.”

“Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.”

“He’s flint, you’re tinder.”

“There you are,” Cardan says as I take my place beside him. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.”

“I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?” “Because they could kill you!” “They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.”

“I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.”

“He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.”

“I, who have had little power in my life, must be on guard against that feeling. Power goes to my head too quickly, like faerie wine.”

“Power is infectious. Power is greedy.”

“I want to be anyone but the person I am.”

“Fear is terrible, but the combination of hope and fear is worse.”

“Watching my back is the perfect opportunity to stick a knife in it.”