Inheritance Games Quotes

Everything’s a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

Why do I have to tell a story?” I asked. “Because if you don’t tell the story, someone else will tell it for you.

Heads, I kiss you. Tails, you kiss me. And either way, it means something.

We aren’t normal. This place isn’t normal, and you’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.

Est unus ex nobis. Nos defendat eius." She is one of us. We protect her.

If yes is no and once is never, then how many sides does a triangle have?

Sometimes things that appear very different on the surface are actually exactly the same at their core.

He left you the fortune, Avery, and all he left us is you.

Traps upon traps. And riddles upon riddles.

You don't have to kiss me. You don't even have to like me, Heiress, but please don't make me do this alone.

Nothing is certain but death and taxes.

I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery—some things are too precious to gamble.

why kill two birds with one stone when you can kill twelve

As awful as it sounds, money is power, and power is magnetic.

Better the devil you do know than the devil you don't

I came to see you,” Jameson told me. “Every day. The least you could have done was wake up while I was here, tragically backlit, unspeakably handsome, and waiting.

The trick to being abandoned was to never let yourself long for anyone who left.

Picture yourself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn. Who's there? I remembered a voice. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.

Getting involved with Jameson would just be throwing gasoline on the fire." "And what a lovely fire it would be,

The only person I trust with all that I am and all that could be, Heiress, is you.

Sometimes all a girl really needed was a very bad idea.

It would be shame," Jameson commented, "if we were related.

I will always protect you" he told me, his jaw tight, his eyes shadowed. "You deserve to feel safe in your own home. And I'll help you with the foundation. I'll teach you what you need to know to take this life like you were born to it. But this...us..." He swallowed. "It can't happen, Avery. I've seen the way Jamerson looks at you.

I don't do vulnerable," Thea retorted. "It clashes with my bitch aesthetic.

Right." Thea dabbed at her lips with her napkin. "No feminism at the dinner table.

Grayson told me. “I wanted her to be you.” “Don’t say that,” I whispered. He looked at me one last time. “There are so many things that I will never say.

Where are you going?” I asked him. After everything it has taken to get to this point, he couldn’t just walk away. “To hell, eventually,” Jameson answered. “Probably to the wine cellar, for now.

The more complicated a person’s strategy seemed, the less likely an opponent was to look for simple answers. If you could keep someone looking at your knight, you could take them with a pawn. Look past the details. Past the complications.

If there's one thing the Hawthorne family isn't, it's fine. They were a twisted, broken mess before you got here, and they'll be a twisted, broken mess once you're gone.

I am a human Rube Goldberg machine," he said. "I do simple things in complicated ways

The world is the board, Heiress. We just have to keep rolling the dice.

Sometimes you gotta excise a wound before it can heal.

You think I didn’t fight the same fight? I halfway convinced myself that as long as Avery was just a riddle or a puzzle, as long as I was just playing, I’d be fine. Well, joke’s on me, because somewhere along the way, I stopped playing.

Grayson Hawthorne was arrogant enough to consider himself bulletproof—and honorable enough to see a promise through to its end.

Jameson Winchester Hawthorne is hungry. He's been looking for something. He's been looking for it since the day he was born.

Everything's a game. Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in life is if we play to win.

Thea isn't a girl. She's a whirlwind wrapped in a hurricane wrapped in steel.

Don't be sorry, Ms. Grambs. Be worthy of it.

I'm not the glass ballerina," I said firmly. "I'm not going to shatter.

I don’t believe in destiny or fate—I believe in choice. Love wasn’t just a choice—it was dozens, hundreds, thousands of choices. Every day was a choice.

Grayson was Not Pleased - and no one did Not Pleased like Grayson Hawthorne.

Is it smash the patriarchy? I hope it’s smash the patriarchy.

Sometimes you have an idea of a person — about who they are, about what you'd be like together. But sometimes that's all that it is: an idea. And for so long, I have been afraid that I loved the idea of Emily more than I will ever be capable of loving anyone real.” He looked at me like the act of doing so was painful and sweet. “It was never just the idea of you, Avery.

I'm a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I'm no stranger to being hated

This was the Grayson I’d met weeks ago: dripping power and well aware that he could come out on top in any battle. He didn’t make threats, because he didn’t have to.

That's the thing, Mystery Girl. I don't think I'm turning anything into a riddle. I don't think I have to. You are a riddle, a puzzle, a game - my grandfather's last.

Nash Hawthorne would probably tip his cowboy hat to Death herself.

When words are real enough, when they’re the exact right words, when what you’re saying matters, when it’s beautiful and perfect and true—it hurts.

Like, even in fiction, friends to lovers? Never my thing. I'm more star-crossed tragedy, supernatural soul mates, enemies to lovers. Epic, you know?

Hit me with all those thinky thoughts,

I stepped into the secret passageway to find Jameson waiting for me. “Fancy meeting you here, Heiress.” “You,” I told him, “are the most annoying person on the face of the planet.

...but if there is one universal truth in the human experience, it is that a finely honed scone-eating palate does not just develop overnight.

Jameson had a habit of tossing out words that should matter like they didn't at all.

Why kill two birds with one stone, he always said, when you could kill twelve?

Giving money to individuals does little.” “It does a lot,” I said quietly, “for those people.

Your silence on the issue of people trying to kill you is deeply disturbing.

Let the rest of the players think I’m dealing with daddy issues. Hawthornes have grandaddy issues instead.

sometimes it feels good to smack the hell out of something.

The answer to your first riddle,” I told him. “If yes is no and once is never, then the number of sides a triangle has… is… two.” I drew out my reply, not bothering to explain how I’d arrived at my answer

We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.

THAT FAXING CHIPHEAD CAN GO STRAIGHT TO ELF AND EAT A BAG OF DUCKS!!!

Everything hurts.” Only Grayson Hawthorne could say that and still sound utterly bulletproof. “It hurts all the time, Avery, but I know the man I was raised to be.

There is no such thing as fighting dirty, I told Nash, if you win.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Some people can make mistakes, make amends, and move on. And some of us live with each and every mistake we make carved into us, into hollow places we don't know how to fill.

I am an expert at not wanting to want things.” I held my sword up for a moment longer, then lowered it, the way he’d lowered his. “But I’m starting to realize that the person I need to be, the person I’m becoming—she’s not that girl anymore.

Hawthornes aren’t supposed to break, his voice whispered in my memory. Especially me.

I told you kid... You're not a player. You're the glass ballerina--- or the knife.

Some of us exist just a little too loudly for the comfort of those who would prefer we did not exist at all

You don't have to kiss me now. You don't have to love me now, Heiress. But when you're ready...When you're ready, if you're ever ready, if it's going to be me - just flip that disk. Heads, I kiss you. Tails, you kiss me. And either way, it means something.

Like the sun and the moon I loved her. Saint Avery. Until death and beyond.

It’s not just clothing. It’s a message. You’re not deciding what to wear. You’re deciding what story you want your image to tell. Are you the ingenue, young and sweet? Do you dress to this world of wealth and wonders like you were born to it, or do you want to walk the line: the same but different, young but full of steel?

Secrets, lies, All I despise. The tree is poison, Don’t you see? It poisoned S and Z and me. The evidence I stole Is in the darkest hole. Light shall reveal all I writ upon the…

What is the human condition, if not Why me?

In the past six weeks, I’d been shot at, blown up, kidnapped, and paraded around as the living, breathing embodiment of Cinderella stories. To the world, I was a scandal, a mystery, a curiosity, a fantasy.

Social butterflies like flitting around and are eager to break limits and push boundaries when they perceive rules as outdated or restrictive. They embrace variability and renewal and want to transform and reevaluate inherited norms, reshaping them in the light of new realities. ("When forgetting the rules of the game")

Right." ... "No feminism at the dinner table.

I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery-some things are too precious to gamble.

He gently traced the line of my jaw. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. You have my word.” He thought he could protect me. He wanted to. He was touching me, and all I wanted was to let him. Let him protect me. Let him touch me.

Jameson was close to me now. Too close. Every one of the Hawthorne boys was magnetic. Larger than life. They had an effect on people—and Jameson was very good at using that to get what he wanted. He wants something from me now.

Jameson smiled. It was his slow, dangerous, heady smile, designed to elicit a reaction. I didn’t give him one.

I'm not good at losing people." Grayson paused. "Either that," he continued hoarsely, "or I am exceptionally good at losing people.

I loved you,” he whispered, “when the world was pain and the only thing that made sense was your eyes. I loved you before I knew to hate myself, and I have loved you every day since.

He was arrogant and awful and had spent the first week of our acquaintance dead set on making my life hell. He was still half in love with Emily Laughlin. But from the first moment I'd seen him, looking away had been nearly impossible. And at the end of the day, he'd chosen me. Over family. Over his mother.

If you want, Mystery Girl, you can start calling me Mystery Boy." -Jameson

Now, if that’s everything, I have an empire to build and a girl to chase.

I wasn't delusional. I wasn't dreaming. I was an heiress.

I'll have you know that most celebrity sites rank me as the second-hottest Hawthorne." -Jameson

It always came down to power and control—who had them, who didn’t, who would lose them first

Screw Ian. Jameson didn't need Ian. It was--now and always--Jameson and Avery against the world

He saw the stylists first, then Avery, and once he saw Avery, it was like he couldn’t see anything else.

So, to summarize,” Max said, “the dead uncle? Not dead, might be your father. Hot boys are also tragic, everyone wants a piece of your fine ash, and the woman who tried to have you killed is foxing your father?

A very risky gamble.

Est unus ex nobis. Nos defendat eius. It goes both ways.

Dearest Avery, I’m sorry. —T. T. H.

But this... us..." He swallowed. "It can't happen, Avery. I've seen the way Jameson looks at you.

She’s delightfully Machiavellian, and she hates to lose.” Xander was absolutely unapologetic. “I like what that does to my odds.

You hated the idea of me.” “But not you. Never you.” “I wanted Eve to be different,” Grayson told me. “I wanted her to be you.” “Don’t say that,” I whispered. He looked at me one last time. “There are so many things that I will never say.

Some people are smart. Some people are good." He opened his eyes and put a hand on each of my shoulders. "And some people are both.

I don't want to explain to you what I don't want to explain to you.

When you're old enough, when you're ready, be warned: There is nothing frivolous about the way a Hawthrone man loves.

Even in the darkest of times, Xander was Xander. "You're going to drop one of those on your foot," I said. "That's okay," Xander responded cheerfully. "I have two feet!

Traps upon traps. Riddles upon riddles

The old man would call us into his study and say the same three words. "Invest. Cultivate. Create.

My psychic senses,” Max announced, “are now attuned to that picture, and I’m getting some pretty clear messages about communing and abs.

But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop. Distractions aren’t just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop.

Four Hawthornes, four suits. Avery wore black.

What the elf, Avery? What the everlasting mothing-foxing elf is going on there?

Nash. Grayson. Jameson. Xander.” He said their names one at a time. “You were the clay, and I was the sculptor, and it has been the joy and honor of my life to make you better men than I will ever be. Men who may curse my name but will never forget it.

There were people out there who might live or die because of me, futures good or bad might be realized because of my choices. What right did I even have to be the one making them?

You're honorable, Avery Kylie Grambs. Once you were with me, you were with me. You love me, scars and all. I know that, Heiress. I do.

When his thumb hovered over the red button, she stared at him aghast. “You’re truly going to … torture me?” He cast her a puzzled look. “Why wouldn’t I torture you?” Because you used to love me, used to cherish me. “I thought we had a moment yesterday? Didn’t you like seeing me in lingerie?” In a monotone voice, he said, “Why did the charge throwers have no ill effect on you?” He’s truly going to do it? Then fuck him. DEFCON. “Chase, I’ve tussled with vibrators stronger than your charge throwers.” No reaction. “You consumed energy. And channeled it at will. How?” All Valkyrie consumed it—they were each connected through a grid of mystical energy—but Regin was the only one she knew of who could radiate it through her body. She’d inherited the talent from her birth mother. “So how does one get started as a magister? College or trade school?” “I don’t have the time or patience for games. Now, tell me, why do you … glow?” “I touched a radioactive alien cock once.” He pressed the button.

The world is kinder to winners

I was supposed to have an edge. But sharp-edged girls had feelings, too.

What if he hates me?" "No one could possibly hate you, Xander," I told him, my heart twisting. "Avery, people have hated me my whole life." There was something in his tone that made me think that very few people understood what it was like to be Xander Hawthorne. "Not anyone who knows you," I said fiercely. Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. "Do you think it's okay," he said, sounding younger than I'd ever heard him, "that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?

Allow me to get this straight,” Zara said, staring past Jameson and straight to me. “You, to whom my father left virtually everything, want the one and only thing he left to me?

ALICE HAWTHORNE IS ALIVE.

I’d promised Grayson secrecy, but this was Hawthorne House. Most of the occupants were far too clever for their own good—or anyone else’s.

Hands reached past me to turn on the faucet. I should have jumped. I should have panicked. But somehow, my body relaxed into the person behind me.

You’re a billionaire now. You have an entire team of people to protect you. The world is your motherfaxing oyster. It’s okay to want things.” Max turned off the shower. “It’s okay to go after what you want.

But for the record, little sis, you’re a minor, and I’m still your legal guardian. The next time someone tries to shoot you, I damn well want to know.

Why do I have to tell a story?" I asked. "Because if you don't tell the story, someone else will tell it for you.

Xander dusted his hands off on his pants. “Secret passage,” he said, then attempted to dust off his pant legs with his hands. “This place is full of them.

Do you trust me, Heiress?” Jameson had donned a leather jacket. He looked like trouble. The good kind.

What fun is it playing by other people's rules?

I never meant to hurt you," Grayson told her. "I know," Gigi said simply. She's not leaving. I haven't lost her. Grayson didn't ignore the emotions twisting in his gut and rising up inside him. For once in his life, he just let them come. "I like my sister," he told her. This time, there was nothing pained about Gigi's smile. "I know.

Sometimes,” Jameson Hawthorne said, sounding strangely contemplative, “things that appear very different on the surface are actually exactly the same at their core.

Nash moves across the aisle to sit next to me. He puts his hand under my chin and raises my eyes to meet his. “Don’t you ever apologize for the things you’ve survived.

And that was why I was in these tunnels with Jameson Hawthorne. That was why he’d started looking at me like I was a mystery again, a puzzle that he, and only he, could solve.

Where are you going?” I asked him. [...] “To hell, eventually,” Jameson answered. “Probably to the wine cellar, for now.

I have a better idea.” Jameson lowered his lips to mine. My neck arched. More mud on my face, my clothes. “I bet,” he countered, “that you can’t wash all this mud off before I…” “Before you what?” I murmured. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne smiled. “Guess.

Aching for them, I wondered who had made Skye so desperate to be the center of someone's world that she couldn't even love her own children, for fear they wouldn't love her back enough.

The world bent to the will of Grayson Hawthorne. What money couldn't buy him, those eyes probably did.

Personally, I find this turn of events delightful,” Max declared. “But you look like a motherfaxing deer caught in motherfaxing headlights.

You made me hungry," I told Jameson. "for everything. I want the world now." I held his gaze in a way that dared him to look away. "And I want it with you.

Everyone is a little wrong sometimes, Heiress.

Someone told me once that fortunes like this one–at a certain point, it's not about the money, because you couldn't spend billions if you tried It's about the power." I looked down. "And I just don't think anyone should have power like that, certainly not me.

But now all I could think about was that, yes, Harry used to scowl when I outmaneuvered him on the chess board, but his eyes had gleamed. He’d called me princess and horrible girl, and I’d called him old man.

Fear wasn’t just ice in your veins or a beast at your throat. Fear was loving someone so fiercely that there was no point in your heart beating if hers did not.

They’d been sculpted by Tobias Hawthorne, formed and forged by the billionaire’s hands. They were extraordinary, and for the first time in their lives, they weren’t living under the weight of his expectations.

Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. “Do you think it’s okay,” he said, sounding younger than I’d ever heard him, “that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?

The coin landed. “Tails,” I said. “I kiss you.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. I pressed my lips to his. And this time, the joke was on me— because I wasn’t playing. This wasn’t nothing. This was the beginning—and I was ready to be bold.

The first scone is what I like to call the practice scone." Xander stuffed an entire scone in his mouth, handed one to me, then swallowed and continued lecturing. "It is not until the third—nay, fourth—scone that you develop any kind of scone-eating expertise." "Scone-eating expertise," I repeated in a deadpan. "Your nature is skeptical," Xander noted. "That will serve you well in these halls, but if there is one universal truth in the human experience, it is that a finely honed scone-eating palate does not just develop overnight.

Is this all just a game to you?” “Everything’s game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.

You don’t have pockets,” she said slowly. “Only abs.” She frowned. “Brothers should not have abs.” “I agree,” Xander said solemnly. “Put on some clothes, man!

Everyone had things they found inexplicably attractive. Apparently, for me it was suit-wearing, silver-eyed guys using the word ‘empirically’ and taking for granted that I knew what it meant.

Repeat after me, Gray: My feelings are valid.” “Stop talking,” Grayson ordered. “My emotions are real,” Xander continued. “Go on. Say it.” “I’m hanging up on you now.” “Who’s your favorite brother?” Xander called loudly enough that Grayson could still hear him even as he removed the phone from his ear. “Nash,” he answered loudly. “Lies!” Grayson’s phone vibrated. “I’m getting another call,” he told Xander. “More lies!” Xander said happily. “Give my regards to Girl Grayson!” “Good-bye, Xander.” “You said good-b—

Once you see that web of possibilities laid out in front of you, unencumbered by fear of pain or failure, by thoughts telling you what can and cannot, should and should not be done… What will you do with what you see?

A few months ago, she’d gotten a tattoo, a single word inked from wrist bone to wrist bone, just under the heel of her hand. SURVIVOR.

I am asking you," she continued fiercely, "to remember that this matters." His pain. His body. "You matter.

Everything about her killed him in the best possible way.

You are fiendish, Avery Kylie Grambs. As far as distractions go, that one wasn't even fair." I shrugged. "I play dirty.

If you had a baby…,” I said. “When I have a baby,” came the deep, heart-shattering reply, “she’ll be my whole world.” “She?” I repeated. Nash settled back into his seat. “I can picture Lib with a little girl.

Well then, Heiress.” Jameson stepped forward. Standing directly to my side, he brought his lips down to my ear and whispered, “Game on.

Before I could get the word daughter out, Grayson leaned his head down and crushed his lips to mine. He kissed me to save me from what I’d been about to say. For a small eternity, nothing in the world existed outside of that kiss. His lips. Mine. For show.

Jameson, Better the devil you know than the one you don’t—or is it? Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. All that glitters is not gold. Nothing is certain but death and taxes. There but for the grace of God go I. Don’t judge. —Tobias Tattersall Hawthorne

Because this was our game - yours and mine - before it was anyone else's. Because when you and I kiss, you feel it, the same way I do.

Ready." Libby looked down at the water balloons she held in each hand–and at her twin tattoos: SURVIVOR on one wrist, and on the other ... TRUST.

How many ways did rich people have of not saying the word rich?

And Nash? He’s going to kill you—and me.” “Libby won’t let him. Killing bad. Cupcakes good.

Because when you love a woman or a man or anyone the way we love, there is no going back.

Call me sentimental, but there’s something beautiful about anything built for one purpose that refuses to die, even once that purpose is gone.

you have to see the world to change it.

I guess that’s what happens,” Jameson said, his eyes never leaving mine as his lips curled upward, “when you take a very risky gamble.

Picture yourself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping in your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn. Who’s there?

I'm sorry, Max." She made a dismissive sound. "Yeah, well, the next time someone tries to shoot you, you're going to have buy me something really nice to make it up to me. Like Australia." "You want me to buy you a trip to Australia?" I asked, thinking that could probably be arranged. "No." Her reply was pert. "I want you to buy me Australia. You can afford it." I snorted. "I don't think it's for sale." "Then I guess that you have no choice but to avoid getting shot at." "I'll be careful," I promised.

there was one thing I’d learned about deceased billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, it was that he was capable of orchestrating nearly anything, manipulating nearly anyone. He’d loved puzzles and riddles and games.

Then why haven’t you noticed I’m not your only tail?” —Nash

H, the word is, two lowercase letters at the very end: v and e.

I used to play chess with him in the park,” I said. “Every morning.

You don't like me much, that's okay. I'm a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I'm no stranger to being hated.

Regret never pays dividends

He saw dozens of permutations in how things could play out, planned for every eventuality, strategized for each and every possible future.

Do you know what philanthropist means?” Libby asked me seriously. “It means rich.

Don’t you know by now, Heiress? I never get caught.

I was born ready!” Xander brandished his shield. He smiled a very Xander Hawthorne smile, then let his bravado falter. “But before we go, group hug?

I moved on from Emily,” he said. “Gray didn’t. And I know in my soul that if he had, he could have loved you. He would have.

It was made with love,” Xander told him. “Just like I tackle with love.” “No tackling,” Nash said.

All one really has to do to win is control the players

I don't do vulnerable. It clashes with my bitch aesthetic.

Well, my other suggestion involves preemptively whacking the entire Hawthorne family, and I was afraid you’d take that as a euphemism.

Your grandfather was a piece of work,” I told Xander. He picked up a fourth scone. “I agree. In his honor, I eat this scone.” He did just that.

Which one of those explains your face?" Nash asked Jameson. The bruises and swelling clearly suggested that their brother had been in one hell of a fight. "Some faces need no explanation," Jameson replied. He gestured to his own. "Work of art.

If I were a boy,” Thea told him with a Southern belle smile, “people would just call me driven.” “Thea.” Constantine frowned at her. “Right.” Thea dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “No feminism at the dinner table.

Sometimes you have an idea of a person — about who they are, about what you'd be like together. But sometimes that's all that it is: an idea. And for so long, I have been afraid that I loved the idea of Emily more than I will ever be capable of loving anyone real.” He looked at me like the act of soing so was painful and sweet. “It was never just the idea of you, Avery.

was starting to sink in that for the rest of my life, the people I met, the people I became close to—there would always be a chance that they saw me as a payout.

I told you she was special,” Jameson murmured as Grayson continued closing in on him. “And I told you to stay away from her.” Grayson stopped, just out of Jameson’s reach.

Where angels fear to tread, have your fun instead.” Rohan’s voice was almost musical, but there was something dark in his tone. A promise. One that Jameson suspected that men in Rohan’s position had been making for centuries. “But be warned: The house always wins.

So,” Libby said sagely, “chess.” “Chess,” I repeated. “The move—it’s called the Queen’s Gambit. Whoever’s playing white puts that second pawn in a position to be sacrificed, which is why it’s considered a gambit.” “Why would you sacrifice a piece?” Libby asked. I thought about billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, about Toby, about Jameson, Grayson, Xander, and Nash. “To take control of the board,” I said.

You have a daughter now," I told him, my voice low. He looked at me, his expression never wavering. "I have two." In the span of a heartbeat, fury gave way to devastation. Tobias Hawthorne the Second wasn't my father. He hadn't raised me. I didn't carry a single drop of his blood. But he'd just called me his daughter.

It might feel better to give to someone you know than a stranger, or to donate to an organization whose story brings a tear to your eye, but that’s your brain playing tricks on you. The morality of an action depends, ultimately and only, on its outcomes.

Churches won't work with you, though, just out of the goodness of their hearts. They'll talk a good game-a sermon on Sunday, maybe, or a special offering for the homeless. But if push comes to show, they won't really move unless you can show them how it'll help them pay their heating bill.

What about what other people deserve?” I asked vehemently. “Did my mother deserve to die without you there? Did she deserve to spend my entire life in love with a ghost?” “Hannah deserved the world.” “So why didn’t you give it to her?” I asked. “Why was punishing yourself more important than what she wanted?

Forty-six point two billion dollars, I thought, my heart attacking my rib cage and my mouth sandpaper-dry. Tobias Hawthorne was worth forty-six point two billion dollars, and he left his grandsons a million dollars, combined. A hundred thousand total to his daughters. Another half million to his servants, an annuity for Nan... The math in this equation did not add up. It couldn't add up. One by one, the other occupants of the room of the room turned to stare at me. 'The remainder of my estate,' Mr. Ortega read, 'including all properties, monetary assets, and worldly possessions not otherwise specified, I leave to Avery Kylie Grambs.

Jameson thought about what he’d written down, and it took everything in him not to look at Avery, because suddenly, her presence here didn’t seem like a boon. It was a risk. After all, Jameson could hear the Proprietor saying, these things are always more interesting when at least a few players have “skin in the game.” Anyone reading those words would be bad. Avery reading them would open Pandora’s box.

Better is being my friend and my partner and realizing that you don't get to make decisions for me. Better is the way you make me see myself as a person who's capable of anything. I would jump out of a plane with you, Jameson, snowboard down the side of a volcano with you, bet everything that I have on you - on us, against the world. You don't get to run off and take risks and expect me to stay behind in a gilded cage of your making. That isn't who you are, and it's not what I want.

In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed. By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today. Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison. Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.

But it is not necessarily the case that liberal democracy is the political system best suited to resolving social conflicts per se. A democracy's ability to peacefully resolve conflicts is greatest when those conflicts arise between socalled "interest groups" that share a larger, pre-existing consensus on the basic values or rules of the game, and when the conflicts are primarily economic in nature. But there are other kinds of non-economic conflicts that are far more intractable, having to do with issues like inherited social status and nationality, that democracy is not particularly good at resolving.

Canada?" Ash said. "You didn't say it was in Canada. "I said Ontario." (Maya) "I thought you meant Ontario, California." "Seriously?" Tori said,rolling her eyes. "A helicopter to California? You may be hot,but your sister clearly inherited all the brains in the family." "Did she call me hot?" Ash whispered to me, looking more annoyed than he ever did when someone called him a jerk. "She hasn't been on a date in six months", Derek rumbled behind us. "No offense, but as long as aren't related to her, you're fair game. Hell, even--" Tori spun on him. "I didn't know." "Um, wait a sec," Corey said. "So Ash is hot and I'm seriously cute? Is there a difference?" "Yes," Hayley said, and propelled him through the line.

To begin with, we have to be more clear about what we mean by patriotic feelings. For a time when I was in high school, I cheered for the school athletic teams. That's a form of patriotism — group loyalty. It can take pernicious forms, but in itself it can be quite harmless, maybe even positive. At the national level, what "patriotism" means depends on how we view the society. Those with deep totalitarian commitments identify the state with the society, its people, and its culture. Therefore those who criticized the policies of the Kremlin under Stalin were condemned as "anti-Soviet" or "hating Russia". For their counterparts in the West, those who criticize the policies of the US government are "anti-American" and "hate America"; those are the standard terms used by intellectual opinion, including left-liberal segments, so deeply committed to their totalitarian instincts that they cannot even recognize them, let alone understand their disgraceful history, tracing to the origins of recorded history in interesting ways. For the totalitarian, "patriotism" means support for the state and its policies, perhaps with twitters of protest on grounds that they might fail or cost us too much. For those whose instincts are democratic rather than totalitarian, "patriotism" means commitment to the welfare and improvement of the society, its people, its culture. That's a natural sentiment and one that can be quite positive. It's one all serious activists share, I presume; otherwise why take the trouble to do what we do? But the kind of "patriotism" fostered by totalitarian societies and military dictatorships, and internalized as second nature by much of intellectual opinion in more free societies, is one of the worst maladies of human history, and will probably do us all in before too long. With regard to the US, I think we find a mix. Every effort is made by power and doctrinal systems to stir up the more dangerous and destructive forms of "patriotism"; every effort is made by people committed to peace and justice to organize and encourage the beneficial kinds. It's a constant struggle. When people are frightened, the more dangerous kinds tend to emerge, and people huddle under the wings of power. Whatever the reasons may be, by comparative standards the US has been a very frightened country for a long time, on many dimensions. Quite commonly in history, such fears have been fanned by unscrupulous leaders, seeking to implement their own agendas. These are commonly harmful to the general population, which has to be disciplined in some manner: the classic device is to stimulate fear of awesome enemies concocted for the purpose, usually with some shreds of realism, required even for the most vulgar forms of propaganda. Germany was the pride of Western civilization 70 years ago, but most Germans were whipped to presumably genuine fear of the Czech dagger pointed at the heart of Germany (is that crazier than the Nicaraguan or Grenadan dagger pointed at the heart of the US, conjured up by the people now playing the same game today?), the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy aimed at destroying the Aryan race and the civilization that Germany had inherited from Greece, etc. That's only the beginning. A lot is at stake.