And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.

Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything.
Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic.

It's the kind of kiss that makes you realize oxygen is overrated.

All this has managed to prove is that you are extremely good at turning me off.

He takes my hand. Intertwines our fingers. Offers me a smile that manages to kiss my heart.

Ah, Ms. Ferrars. I don't know what you hope to accomplish by sitting in the corner.

Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into the semblance of something too passive to punch.

I turn to the glass wall keeping me from the other half of my heart. Press my head against the cool surface. Wish he would wake up.

My legs feel full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision, choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it's time to
wake up
wake up
Wake up, he whispers.

Kenji-So the minute you opened your mouth you just shattered all his dreams, huh?

Juliette- I will push you off the roof.

Kenji-Yeah, I can definitely see why Adam wouldn't like you.

Torture is not torture when there's any hope of relief.

It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in her. No one will ever hear me again.

Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree.

We are synonyms but not the same.

It was so hard for Ocean to stomach that the world was filled with such awful people. I tried to tell him that the bigots and the racists had always been there, and he said he'd honestly never seen them like this, that he never thought they could be like this, and I said yes, I know. I said that's how privilege works.

I am suspended in the moment. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul.

I have a curse.
I HAVE A GIFT.
I'm a monster.
I'M MORE THAN HUMAN.
My touch Is lethal.
MY TOUCH IS POWER.
I am their weapon.
I WILL FIGHT BACK.

I've come to believe that the most dangerous man in the world is the one who feels no remorse. The one who never apologizes and therefore seeks no forgiveness. Because in the end it is our emotions that make us weak, not our actions.

Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.

I'm an old creaky staircase when I wake up.