Recently added

“What happened wasn’t fair!”

“Fair? You mean to claim with a straight face that you buy into that heresy, my boy?”

Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they’re after an image, not a person.

“Government affairs are a bit beyond our experience,” said Jean.

“Nonsense. You’ll feel right at home. What is government but theft by consent? You’ll be moving in a society of kindred spirits.”

How you deal with it I must and will leave to you, not out of despair or resignation but in deference to my conscience, that broken clock which I believe is now chiming one of its occasional right hours. I will not question your reasons. It is enough for you to tell me that you wish to keep this distance between us, and it will always be enough. Know that a single word will bring me running, but unless and until it pleases you to give it, I will expect nothing, force nothing, and contrive nothing contrary to your wishes.

I desire you as deeply as I ever have, but I understand that the fervor of a desire is irrelevant to its justice. I want your heart on merit, in mutual trust, or not at all, because I cannot bear to see you made uneasy by me. Not for all the world would I do so again, and I leave it to you to tell me how to proceed, if and when you can, if and when you will.

“Remember when I told you, for the first time? You nearly threw me off the roof—”

“I thought you deserved it. You know, it’s an opinion I return to from time to time, whether or not a roof is available.”

“You’re a difficult woman, Sabetha. But then, difficult women are the only ones worth falling in love with.”

“How would you know? It’s not like you’ve ever been after anyone else—”

“That part’s easy. I started with the most difficult woman possible, so there was never any need to look any further.”

“You’re trying to be charming.” She squeezed his hand once, then pulled away. “I choose not to be entirely charmed, Locke Lamora.”

“Not entirely?”

“Not entirely. Not yet.”

“I never even liked cats all that much.”

“Surely you realize,” said Patience, “that cats are no great respecters of human opinion.”

They’ll be fine, and wiser for the experience. Young minds are brittle. Oldsters, now, we’ve had some disappointments. We’ve set aside the notion that we’re the center of the universe, so our minds bend with strain instead of meeting it head-on.

Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you’ve lost isn’t the same as winning?

Maybe this is going to complicate the hell out of things. So what? You’re the complication I want more than anything else. You’re my favorite complication.

Most of us find it starkly ludicrous that the height of all possible ambition, to the ungifted, must be to drape oneself in crowns and robes.

Next came the sort of kiss that banished the world to distant background noise and seemed to last a month.

You can’t help being young, but it’s past time that you stopped being stupid.