Heffner Quotes

The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.

It is not often one chooses a demon over an angel.” So they told me. But this demon was the only one who made me feel safe.

Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women's opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering.

I found it easier to stare out into the infinite blackness, away from the fire burning itself out in his eyes.

I was falling for the man who had turned me. He could never know.

In life, one can choose to go up, down, or standstill. I choose to move up.

It felt as if I’d been teleported to the dark side of the moon, forced to gaze out at the stars and wonder which one I’d come from.

–We are all dying– she told me. –Even something of the immortal will die– “What?” –Meaning–

There is a rule in Hell: Don’t trust anyone who takes time out of their day to help you.

Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare

…the door banged wide open, and the most striking man I had ever seen stood in the frame, the black winds whipping around him like a chariot of storm clouds.

Father never went into depth about what happened if I woke up, unable to remember how I’d died, but most definitely in the hands of those not selected to have s’mores and sleepovers for all of eternity.

I clung tightly to Kwan’s mane as he propelled his great serpent body through the cloud banks. The cockatrice’s big green head dipped under the clouds, and I spotted an emerald island below, with dramatic peaks jutting up from the jungle. I asked the great cockatrice for the name of the isle, but he only laughed at me, saying that names changed faster than a century’s wind. That didn’t seem very fast to me, but I took his word for it.

My body slid from human to wolf in a crack! of black smoke. Wolf was panting and I watched frost dissipate on my hot tongue, sending tiny rivulets of steam into the air. The world was sharp and clear, and I never realized how many different colors of shadow there were. It made me savor the dark beauty of night even more.

Yet in his own estimate, one theme in particular dominated all others: the growing tyranny of the majority, the ever-increasing and most formidable barriers raised by the majority around the free expression of opinion, and, as a result, the frightening oneness of American thinking, the absence of eccentricity and divergence from the norm. A perfect liberty of the Mind exists in America, said Tocqueville, just as long as the sovereign majority has yet to decide its course. But once the majority has made up its mind, then all contrary thought must cease, and all controversy must be abandoned, not at the risk of death or physical punishment, but rather at the more subtle and more intolerable pain of ostracism, of being shunned by one's fellows, of being rejected by society. Throughout history kings and princely rulers had sought without success to control human thought, that most elusive and invisible power of all. Yet where absolute monarchs had failed, democracy succeeds, for the strength of the majority is unlimited and all pervasive, and the doctrines of equality and majority rule have substituted for the tyranny of the few over the many the more absolute, imperious and widely accepted tyranny of the many over the few.

HEFFNER, WILLIAM C. History of Poor Relief Legislation in Pennsylvania (1682-1913). Cleona, Pa.: 1913.

I blew a strand of black hair from my face. “A demon treating another with kindness is something I have yet to see.” “Careful,” the demon whispered. “You may have already seen the rough shape and form it takes in this world, and yet you do not recognize it.

In a world of fog and gray, the youth is a shining being dressed in dark violet, his golden-flecked hair smoothed back from his bronzed temples. He resembles a human, but no man I have ever seen holds himself like a king, like a gleaming statue chiseled from topaz. I swallow. I am standing before a demon, the most beautiful being I have ever seen, and I can’t run. I can only stand in the hushed glade and stare, snowflakes falling in the space between us.

We cannot leave, but that does not mean we will stay—stay in the same place in the same system that profits from recycling us at the bottom. We will disrupt it. Build our own space that will swallow bits and pieces of theirs. We were waiting for permission, waiting for the Darkness to acknowledge our worth, but we’ve always had the power to make it come to be.

Behind lay loneliness and delusions. Ahead lay answers, and yes, Riley. So bent double beneath my load, but naked no longer, I followed the two demons deeper into Hell.

The lanterns filled the sky, pulsing with the harmonious light of fireflies, and a great host of ghosts departed from the earth to join them. The higher they rose into the zenith of the heavens, the further night was chased back, until a great and radiant being resumed its throne in the sky.

I want to be humbled. I want to meet people more messed up than I am. I want to get lost and come out the other end having no idea who I am.

Clinging to the rags I had left, I gazed out upon the full breadth of the Furnace and shook at what I saw. The world had been wiped clean of all trace of humanity. Sharp sandstone peaks protruded into the gray sky like a humped backbone, spilling into vast seas of sand on either side. Boulders and driftwood, the castaways of some bygone mountain, cast the only disruption upon the land. And I realized—no sun crossed the sky; there was only constant, lingering grayness.

I’d like to sit there,” I said softly to the girl sitting in front of the other mirror. She scampered. I took over her abandoned make-up and painted my face. Red cheeks, to attract hungry vampyre glances. Black liquid eyeliner and mascara, to draw attention away from my bitter eyes. My silky-thin, raven hair, undone in waves over my bare shoulders. The magenta shade of apple gloss on my lips, to make them plump and inviting. Finally, a strapless golden dress that hugged my hips and not much lower. I stood up, feeling the cold air slide down the bare skin of my back like fingers, and panicked. I couldn’t wear something like this! Not without a cardigan! A light dress jacket, at least! I took a gulp of Amrit’s wine and detached myself from the fretting child in my head. Then I strode from the sleeping chambers.

We’re only five years apart,” I said defiantly. “If you look at some of those dysfunctional vampyre relationships, we’re near normal.

The Bloodsucker Queen has lived for what, a millennium? She can wait on her decaying ass a little while longer.

I loved the way his eyes glowed when they looked at me. My piece of Earth. I kissed it one more time, gently, and let it go.

When you face the vampyres, you fight with passion, because you can see a new sunrise beyond their darkness. A life beyond their misery. And you’re going to make sure everyone else wakes up with you to see it.

I do know that Korea will never be the same again. Me? I want to run as a wolf at night but walk in the sun as a man. And I would like someone to run with—be they wolf or tiger, whether they howl or growl.

I knew my strange, oversized family of fur and claws would go to the ends of South Korea and beyond for me. They would spend days in the clandestine laboratories of Yong Enterprises where the future was made and nights gallivanting around a terrifying and wondrous spirit world where the past was alive and well.

I asked the ink to part, and it did. I understood now that it was water of a different kind; spilled blood could be painted into words. Pain barely touched me, not from where I stood in the belly of deepest fury, every cloud from here to the East Sea answering my summons.

The Frost King’s vampyres thought they had won this city. They didn’t know the first thing about surviving in it.

I stared at him. He loomed before me in the junk-cluttered alley with the grace of a prince but the mystery of a mythological being. He was neither quite here nor there. A creature who flashed his full glory for an instant in dreaming, but upon waking, left me questioning what I had seen. I had come here believing that at last I would know if the oldest vampyre in Maya’s line was friend or foe. I still didn’t know, but I did know it was a risk I wanted to take.

Normal is always according to someone,” she’d said. “I only ask whose normal it is. You only get one life, Sun-a, in a world that has seen millions go by. Now, do you want to live the life that millions already have, or do you want to live the life that no one has?

I told you we were returning with the Dragon King,” I called, adopting a fighting stance. Silver scales armored my forearms up to my shoulders. “But it was never him you should have been afraid of. I am the Queen of Air and Darkness. These are my people. And you are trespassing in my home.

We are the gods now, I realized, gazing upon their weary faces one by one. Heaven help us.

Since the Red Night fell, there have been three things I haven’t felt in months: a full belly, laughter, and the sun. Today someone laughed.

I stood alone in the alley, unruffled by the winds whispering with broken Yeouiju curses and lost souls. My single eye gleamed gold as I scented my prey’s fear.

We landed heavily on the sand. I threw off Khyber’s embrace. “I can walk by myself.” “Good. You’re heavier than usual. How does a girl manage to put on weight on a deserted island?” “I’m just trying to keep you in shape,” I replied sweetly. “Your tiny, pale-ass arms aren’t impressing anyone.” “Sensitive, are we?” But when a tree-sized stalagmite barred our way, Khyber swiftly strode forward to snap it in two. I laughed and brushed past him. “I’m not the only one.

In every story I’d read about dragons, they dwelled in caves far away from civilization. They didn’t live in the upper heights of ritzy Gangnam with a view of the Han River shimmering in the moonlight. And they certainly didn’t live in a villa that looked like a geometric cube with windows that changed color based on the time.

You have seen the suffering that creates the greatest and most beautiful of things. It also creates the greatest of evils.

The temperature in the glade plummeted, and I realized she was right behind me. Her jaws, blackened with tar-hardened ice, ripped into my thigh, and then her silvery whorled horns bucked me into the swamp. I whirled around, scrambling to get a grip on the slippery weeds. Sun Bin roared. My challenge was met. She wanted to destroy the vampyre tombs, but she would make sure I was defeated first. I braced myself as the Winter Dragon lowered her head and charged.

I was about to make a snappy reply, when suddenly Lisa and Robbie came flying into the house and stormed into the kitchen, it being their regular habit in such awful weather to have hot chocolate or coffee soon as they arrived home. Yet upon observing Ami, and I, they abruptly stopped in passing and then looked us both over and how we were dressed. Lisa with a giggle remarked: -Oh, what is this, a slumber party? -Ha! Robbie exclaimed. -if you had on one of dad’s ratty old bath robes you would be a poor man’s Hugh Heffner (snort), and so this must be one of your bunny girls!