Mud Vein Quotes

What’s the difference?” I asked him. “Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?” “One is a choice, and one is not.

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

Tell me a truth, Senna." "I don't know how." "Then tell me a lie." "I don't love you." "The truth is for the mind," he says. "Lies are for the heart. So let's just keep lying.

We are all going to die, but I’m going to die first. In the very last second of my life, I will think of you. Senna

Senna: “Why are you here?” Isaac: “Because you are.

Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” “Maybe lifting someone else’s weight makes yours a little more bearable

Isaac: “It hurts me when you cry.” Senna: “I’m crying, but I don’t feel anything,” Isaac: “Yes, I know. That’s what hurts me the most.

He kissed me with color, with drumbeat, and a surgeon’s precision. He kissed me with who he was, the sum of his life—and it was all encompassing. I wondered what I kissed him with since I was only broken parts.

It’s your darkness that pulls me in. Your mud vein. But sometimes having a mud vein will kill you.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

You’ve been silent your whole life. You were silent when we met, silent when you suffered. Silent when life kept hitting you. I was like that too, a little. But not like you. You are a stillness. And I tried to move you. It didn’t work. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t move me. I heard everything you didn’t say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn’t shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.

We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in.

You breathed life back into me. It was instinct for me to be there with you. I didn’t want to save you, I just didn’t know how to leave you.

That's why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.

I was sitting in a white room hating myself, until you breathed life back into me. You loved me so much that I started to love myself.

I heard everything you didn’t say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn’t shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.

But there is something about the process of convincing yourself that you don’t care that just confirms even more that you do.

I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they've lived through.

Nick was wrong about me. Having a mud vein didn’t kill me; it saved me. My vein drew Isaac. He was the light and he followed me into the darkness. He became the darkness, then he carried my burdens so I wouldn’t have to.

People lie. They use you and they lie, all the while feeding you bullshit about being loyal and never leaving you. No one can make that promise, because life is all about seasons, and seasons change.

Every time you want to remember what love feels like, you look for me.

There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are those invisible strings… Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soul mates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them though their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

Life is too short to hide your wrongs. So I hide myself instead.

His lips move against my hair. “I’m sorry, Senna.” I tremble. He’s sorry? Him? “For what?” There is a million year pause. “I couldn’t save you this time.” I cry into his chest. Not because he couldn’t. Because he wanted to.

Love doesn’t leave. It bears all things.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.

Bad things happen because we live in a world with evil.

Love is a Godgiven tool, she tells me. It screws things back in place that were loose, and it cleans out all the broken pieces that you don't need anymore.

It’s never that I don’t want to be with you. It’s that you don’t want to be with me.” -Isaac

You'll feel me in the fall backwards. She'd kissed me on the mouth and walked out.

When I was a child my mother would tell me that people lost soul in two ways: someone could take it from you, or you’d surrender it willingly.

The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.” I kiss the man I lie to. He kisses me with truth. I am set free

Nick loved me enough to leave me alone. Isaac knew me better than I knew me. I said I wanted to be left alone, he knew better. I said I wanted white, he knew better. He brightened me. He enlightened me. Because Isaac was my soulmate. Not Nick. Nick was just some great love. Isaac knew how to heal my soul.

Acceptance. Embrace the suck.

Being stuck on love was a real bitch to cure. Like cancer, I think. Just when you think you’re over it, it comes back.

Isaac is touch, and he is sound. He is smell and he is sight. I tried to make him a single sense like I did with everyone else, but he is all of them. He overpowers my senses and that is exactly why I ran from him. I was afraid of feeling brightly—afraid I would become used to the color and sounds and smells, and they would be taken from me. I was a self-fulfilling prophecy; destroying before I could be destroyed. I wrote about women like that, I didn’t realize I was one.

Because simplicity speaks the loudest.

You believe in a person’s permanence because humans have a tendency to stick to you when life is good. I call them honey summers. I’ve had enough honey summers in life to know that people leave you when winter comes.

Love is a possession; it’s something that you own from the layers of people in your life. But if my life were a cake it would be un-layered, unbaked, missing ingredients. I isolated myself too soundly to own anyone’s love.

Love sticks, and it stays and it braves the bullshit.

You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains. I wonder if we ever get out of here, will we feel the loss?

You are a lot uglier than you think, plenty more selfish than you are ever likely to admit. So, you ignore what’s inside of you. Thinking if you don’t acknowledge it, it’s not really there. Until someone unlikely comes along and cracks you. They see every dark corner, and they get it. And they tell you it’s okay to have dark corners, instead of making you feel ashamed of them.

We are all going to die, but I'm going to die first. In the very last second of my life, I will think of you.

Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.

You need simplicity to create complexity

We all do don’t we? We are consumed with our own mortality. Some people eat right and exercise to preserve their lives, others drink and do drugs daring fate to take theirs, and then there are the floaters—the ones who try to ignore their mortality altogether because they’re afraid of it.” “Which are you?” He set down his knife and looked at me. “I’ve been all three. And now I’m undecided.

Forgiveness is for Buddhists.

It’s the worst form of torture a person can imagine—the wait to die.

How many times have you been in love, Doctor?" "Twice. The love of my life, and now my soulmate." "What's the difference? Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?" "One is a choice, and one is not...There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings. Maybe the chances that you'll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it's not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

I discovered that private things were mostly sour. They sat spoiling in the corners of your heart for so long that by the time you acknowledged them you were dealing with something rancid.

You have to believe someone sometime, Senna. When they tell you that. Otherwise you’ll never know what it feels like to be loved. And that’s a sad thing.

Fear, light footed, dances around me. She whispers seductively in my ear. We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in.

Hay demasiado mal, demasiada maldad en el mundo para alguna vez estar a salvo.

Why are you here?” “Because you are.

If there was a God,” I said, “I’d say with confidence that he hates me. Because my life is the sum of bad things. The more people you let in, the more bad you let in.

Love doesn’t leave. It bears all things

I wasn't good at saying. I was good at writing.

I found my piece. She wasn't what I was expecting. If you formed a woman's soul out of black graphite, bathed it in blood, and then rolled it around in the softest petals, you still wouldn't have touched on the complication that was my match.

Who is safe? No one. There is too much bad, too much evil in the world to ever be safe.

It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more.

—Los humanos no fueron hechos para cargar con el peso de otros. Apenas podemos con el propio

Tell me a truth, Senna." "I don't know how," I breath. "Then tell me a lie." "I don't love you," I say. I sink beneath the weight of it all. Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head. "The truth is for the mind," he says. "Lies are for the heart. So let's just keep lying.

That’s what it’s like to be a prisoner of anything. You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains.

Love comes slow, but God does it go fast. He was beautiful—then he was ugly. I esteemed him, then I esteemed him not.

Ya que los seres humanos pueden elegir ser ya sea crueles o buenos, no son, de hecho, ninguna de esas cosas en esencia.

I’ve had enough honey summers in life to know that people leave you when winter comes.

People lie. They use you and they lie, all the while feeding you bullshit about being loyal and never leaving you.

I’m sorry, Senna.” I tremble. He’s sorry? Him? “For what?” There is a million year pause. “I couldn’t save you this time.” I cry into his chest. Not because he couldn’t. Because he wanted to

Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

El amor resiste, y se queda y desafía toda la mierda y las mentiras.

La vida que eliges vivir es la esencia de quien eres

I don’t feel anything. Not even fear. Can you tell me what to feel, Isaac?” His throat spasmed, then he licked his lips. “It’s emotional Morphine,” he said finally. “Just go with it.” And that was it. That’s all we said for that night.

Love is a possession; it’s something that you own from the layers of people in your life. c

I feel emotion rush me - the intimacy, the awkwardness. I want to revolt against it, but I don't. It takes an awful toll on a person to fight down everything they're feeling.

Engagement pictures made me want to vomit—especially when they were taken on railroad tracks. I always pictured Thomas the Train rolling over them, his smiley blue face beaded with their blood.

Sometimes I hate him. When he does the dishes, he shakes off each one before setting it in the drying rack. Water flies everywhere. A couple of drops always hit me in the face. I have to leave the room to avoid smashing a plate against his head.

I didn’t eat pork either. Except bacon, of course. Everyone eats bacon.

Eso es lo que se siente el ser prisionero de lo que sea. Quieres tu libertad hasta que la consigues, entonces te sientes desnuda sin tus cadenas.

Isaac was a stranger and he had seen more of my wounds than anyone else. Not because I chose him like I did Nick. He was just always there. That's what scared me. It was one thing inviting someone into your life, choosing to put your head on the train tracks and wait for imminent death, but this - this I had no control over.

Si alguien te amaba tanto como se amaban a sí mismos, ¿por qué engañaban, rompían promesas y mentían? ¿No estaba en nuestra naturaleza resguardarnos? ¿No deberíamos resguardar nuestra alma gemela con mucho más fervor?

Estar atascado en el amor es una puta enfermedad que curar. Como el cáncer, pienso. Cuando crees que lo has superado, vuelve.

What you wrap around your soul determines your outcome.

I once read that there is an invisible thread that connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. [...] Please don’t let it break, I silently plead to him. I need to know that some cords can’t be cut.

No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine.

it's emotional Morphine," he said finally. "Just go with it.

Si Dios decidiera no permitir que nada malo le sucediera a la gente, tendría que quitarles su libre albedrío. Se convertiría en el dictador y ellos serían sus marionetas

—La verdad es para la mente —dice—. Las mentiras son para el corazón. Así que vamos a seguir mintiendo.

—Los humanos no fueron hechos para cargar con el peso de otros. Apenas podemos con el propio. —Incluso mientras lo digo, no lo creo del todo. He visto a Isaac hacer cosas que la mayoría no harían. Pero es sólo Isaac. —Quizás el llevar la carga de alguien vuelve a la tuya más tolerable —dice.

Cada vez que quieras recordar cómo se siente el amor, búscame. Esa línea abarcaba cada mujer que ha ofrecido su pequeño corazón latiente a un hombre. Porque todos tenemos a alguien que nos recuerda como quema el amor. Ese irrenunciable amor que se resbala de nuestros dedos como arena.

That’s what it’s like to be a prisoner of anything. You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains. I wonder if we ever get out of here, will we feel the loss? It sounds like a joke, but I know how the human mind works.

there was a God,” I said, “I’d say with confidence that he hates me. Because my life is the sum of bad things. The more people you let in, the more bad you let in.

I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they’ve lived through.

There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings. Maybe the chances that you'll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it's not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

When i was a little boy i had a red bike, every night when I went to bed I begged God to give my bike wings so that in the morning, I could fly away. Every morning I'd crawl out of bed and run straight to the garage to see if he answered my prayers. I still have the bike. It's mire rusted than red now. But I still check. Everyday.

El amor llega lento, pero Dios hace que se vaya rápido.

—Por favor —dice—. Solo intenta vivir.

Nunca puedes dejar de ver lo que reconoces como una parte de ti mismo.

Love comes slow, but God does it go fast.

He touches right where it hurts, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt.

I like my scars,” I say. “I earned them. Now, get out.

It’s a painful thing to look inside yourself and see the whys and the hows of your clockwork.

I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore because it hurt you.

you’ll feel me in the fall backwards

As far as I was concerned children had bipolar disorder. They were angry, unpredictable, emotional ambulance-sirens with pigtails, grubby hands and food crusted mouths that twisted from smiles to frowns and back again as quick as a breath.

De todas formas… amor y cocaína. Las consecuencias de ambos son caras: tienes una probada poderosamente alta, luego vuelves a caer resbalando, arrepintiéndote de cada hora que pasaste metido en algo tan peligroso. Pero vuelves por más. Siempre vuelves por más.

This was not me. I was spilling my guts, as some people called it; divulging. It was word vomit and Saphira Elgin had her fingers down my throat. I discovered that private things were mostly sour. They sat spoiling in the corners of your hear for so long that by the time you acknowledged them you were dealing with something rancid. And that's what I did; I threw every rotting thing at her, and she absorbed each one.

—Mi esposa. No me gusta esa palabra. Me hace pensar en delantales con volantes con patrón de manzanas y ciego, sumiso amor.

People leave—that’s what I was used to—but Isaac showed up.

When you spend extraordinary amounts of time pushing someone away, their reaction to your apology tends to be slow.

—Tres cosas no se pueden ocultar por mucho tiempo: el sol, la luna y la verdad

Es una cosa dolorosa mirar dentro de ti mismo y ver los porqués y los comos de tu reloj .

—Es tu oscuridad que me atrae. Tú vena sucia. Pero algunas veces tener una vena sucia te matará.

—Todos lo hacemos ¿no? Nos consume nuestra propia mortalidad. Algunas personas comen bien y hacen ejercicio para preservar sus vidas, otros beben y se drogan retando al destino a tomar la de ellos, y luego están los flotadores, los que tratan de ignorar su mortalidad porque tienen miedo de ella. —¿Cuál eres tú? Dejó el cuchillo y me miró. —He estado en los tres. Y ahora estoy indeciso.

Voices have been, and always will be, too afraid to speak with as much volume as a book. That’s why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.

Mantras sounded better in Latin. Repeat any phrase in the educated fancy-pants language most of the ancient philosophers used, you sounded like a goddamn genius. Repeat the same phrase in English, you sounded like a loon.

Estamos tan acostumbrados al ruido, tardamos unos días en aclimatarnos a la pérdida del mismo. Eso es lo que se siente el ser prisionera de lo que sea. Quieres tu libertad hasta que la consigues, entonces te sientes desnuda sin tus cadenas.

His entire aspect was menacing, starting with his chilling eyes and the pronounced bone structure of his face. He was tall and lean, but the skin on his arms was stretched over muscles that looked as taut as whipcord. The backs of his hands were bumpy with strong veins. His clothes and hair had snagged natural debris—twigs, sprigs of moss, small leaves. He seemed indifferent to all that, just as he did to the mud caked on his boots and the legs of his jeans. He smelled of the swamp, of sweat, of danger.

If God decided to never let anything bad happen to people, he would have to take away their free will. He would become the dictator and they would be his puppets.

La valentía se reduce a nada más que un sentido fuerte del deber que lleva a cuestas un sentido incluso más fuerte que la locura

most bravery boiled down to nothing more than a strong sense of duty that piggybacked an even stronger sense of crazy. Everything brave was a little bit crazy.

Why didn’t you just ask?” “Because I don’t do that. Asking questions is at the forefront of developing relationships.

—¿Cuál es la diferencia? —le pregunté—. ¿Entre el amor de tu vida y tu alma gemela? —Una es una opción y la otra no lo es.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, -- determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.

Kidnappings made for ransom were fast and messy; guns pointed at your head, urgent demands. Not keypads on the door and enough food to last through one of George R.R. Martin's long winters.

She lay there in the dark and allowed the grief to flow through her veins, thick as mud. She’d learned long ago not to fight it, to make space for it, the way one might for a new tchotchke on the shelf, a souvenir from a trip you didn’t want to forget. That was all grief was, really, Louise had determined—remembering.

when I am writing a book, I’ll go to sleep with a plot hole in my story that I don’t know how to fix. When I wake up, I know. It’s as if it were there all along and I just needed the right sleep to access the answer.

people eat right and exercise to preserve their lives, others drink and do drugs daring fate to take theirs, and then there are the floaters—the ones who try to ignore their mortality altogether because they’re afraid of it.

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the rain. He thought he lay beneath the earth, beneath England. Long ages passed; cold and rain seeped through him; stones shifted within him. In the Silence and the Dark he grew vast. He became the earth; he became England. A star looked down on him and spoke to him. A stone asked him a question and he answered it in its own language. A river curled at his side; hills budded beneath his fingers. He opened his mouth and breathed out spring. He thought he was pressed into a thicket in a dark wood in winter. The trees went on for Over dark pillars separated by thin, white slices of winter light. He looked down. Young saplings pierced him through and through; they grew up through his body, through his feet and hands. His eye-lids would no longer close because twigs had grown up through them.

Has estado callada tu vida entera. Estuviste callada cuando nos conocimos, callada cuando sufriste. Callada cuando la vida continúo golpeándote. Yo también estaba así, un poco. Pero no como tú. Eres inmovible. Y yo trate de moverte. No funciono. Pero eso no significa que tú no me hayas movido. Escuche todo lo que no dijiste. Lo escuche tan fuerte que no podía callarlo. Tu silencio, Senna, lo escuche en voz alta.

What’s the difference?” I asked him. “Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?” “One is a choice, and one is not.” I’d never thought of love as a choice. Rather, it seemed like the un-choice. But if you stayed with someone who was self-destructing and chose to keep loving, I suppose it could be a choice. I waited for him to go on. To explain how I fit in. “There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye,” he said. “Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings.” As if to make his point, his finger traced a black ribbon that ran through my horse’s mane. “Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

Querido Lector, Soy una escritora y las letras son mi arma. Quiero lastimarte. Quiero que mis letras sean sal y quiero tirarlas en tu herida abierta. Quiero que mis palabras sean piezas irregulares de espejos en el que te puedas ver reflejado. Soy una sadica también conocida como una artista. Mis libros son un llamado para las mujeres que se han doblado por angustia, obligadas por el fastidio, cautivas de un pasado que nos las deja ir, vencedoras de un pasado que trató de matarlas. Verás, tengo una enfermedad, se llama naturaleza humana y estoy fascinada por ella. Así que, si decides leer Mud Vein, recuerda eso sobre mí. No estoy escribiendo para entretenerte, o para ganar dinero, o para tener mi libro apoyado cuidadosamente en un estante en Target. Escribo para explorar las oscuras esquinas de mí ser, y quiero que vengas conmigo. Soy un poco como tú. Creo que te verás en las páginas de Mud Vein. No te he dicho mucho sobre él a propósito. Quiero que vayas a ciegas. Quiero que te tropieces con un pensamiento, un sonido, una herida que creías especial para ti. Y darte cuenta de que yo también las he sentido, alguien que nunca has conocido. Si decides leer Mud Vein, por favor no te preguntes qué dice, pregúntate que significa. Y una vez que leas mis negras letras sobre una página blanca, envíame un email y dime tu interpretación. No puedo esperar para saber tus pensamientos.

With free will comes bad decisions; decisions to drink and drive and kill someone’s child. Decisions to murder. Decisions to choose whom we love, whom we spend our life with. If God decided to never let anything bad happen to people, he would have to take away their free will. He would become the dictator and they would be his puppets.

La gente miente. Ellos te utilizan y mienten, a la vez mientras te alimentan con mierda sobre ser leal y nunca dejarte. Nadie puede hacer esa promesa, porque la vida tiene que ver con las estaciones, y las estaciones cambian. No me gusta el cambio. No se puede confiar en ello, sólo puedes confiar en el hecho de que va a suceder. Pero antes de que suceda, y antes de que aprendas, se siente bien acerca de sus estúpidas promesas de mierda. Eliges creer, porque es necesario. Vas a través de un verano cálido, donde todo es hermoso y no hay nubes, sólo calor, calor, calor. Crees en la permanencia de una persona, porque los seres humanos tienen una tendencia a pegarse a ti cuando la vida es buena. Yo los llamo los veranos de miel. He tenido bastantes veranos de miel en la vida para saber que las personas se van cuando llega el invierno. Cuando la vida te congela y estás temblando y te pones capas de protección lo más que puedas para sobrevivir. Ni siquiera lo notas al principio. El frío te pone demasiado aturdido para ver con claridad. Entonces, de repente, miras y la nieve está empezando a derretirse, y te das cuenta que pasaste el invierno sola. Eso me molesta mucho. Tanto como para dejar a la gente antes de que me dejen a mí. Eso es lo que hice con Nick. Eso es lo que traté de hacer con Isaac. Excepto que no se iría. Él se quedó todo el invierno.

To know who a person really is, I believe you have to know first who they were.

It’s like jumping backwards into a snowdrift and not knowing how deeply you’re going to sink.

—¿Por qué no sólo preguntas? —Por qué no hago eso. Hacer preguntas es el frente para el surgimiento de las relaciones.

Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.

It feels like parts of me keep being taken; eaten by disease, hacked off, snapped in two.

−Me duele cuando lloras. −Estoy llorando, pero no siento nada. −Sí, lo sé. Eso es lo que más me duele.

Estoy en una niebla y la mitad del tiempo ni siquiera me doy cuenta de ello.

That’s why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.

The entire holiday was a joke; Jesus had to share it with Santa. The only thing worse was that Jesus had to share Easter with a bunny. That was just creepy.

If I ended up with this girl I was going to buy a new table. I'd had sex on it too many times for it to be relationship kosher.

Soy un animal, empeñado en sobrevivir. No dejo nada entrar. No dejo nada salir.

—Todavía te veo, Senna —dice en mi cabello—. Nunca puedes dejar de ver lo que reconoces como una parte de ti mismo.

Tell me a truth, Senna.“ “I don’t know how.” “Then tell me a lie.” “I don’t love you.” “The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.

most remarkable thing was that I was feeling.

The minute I started freely loving Nick he left me.

You choose to believe them, because you need to.

I wondered what I kissed him with since I was only broken parts.

¿Cómo te quedas de pie y sacudes la mano de alguien en el mundo real cuando han estado juntos en una pesadilla?

—La gente necesita sentirse conectado con los otros —dice Isaac—. No tiene nada de malo. Tampoco tiene nada de malo sentirse demasiado roto para acercarse a eso.

But out in the freezing cold, with the blizzard swirling around me, and my kidnapper’s liquid eyes probing my face, I can’t remember

You have to believe someone sometime, Senna. When they tell you that. Otherwise you'll never know what it feels like to be loved. And that's a sad thing.

Nunca puedes dejar de ver lo que reconoces como una parte de ti mismo

That’s what it’s like to be a prisoner of anything. You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains.

When I was a child my mother would tell me that people lost soul in two ways: someone could take it from you, or you'd surrender it willingly.

I'm sure almost no one deludes themselves that all their ancestors were decent. Pick a vein, any vein: mud mixed with lightning flows through, an unruly fusion of bad blood and good.

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the rain.

I was alone alright. And life surely had been a hard trial for me, so far. From the time mama and Katie fell sick, life had been one misery after another. But here I was. Still with breath in my lungs. And blood in my veins. And memories and voices in my heart. Good ones. And life was going on, all around me. With or without me, it was going on. It weren't a matter of the whole thing stopping or the whole thing going on. The whole thing was going on. It was only a matter of me standing up and deciding what part I had to play in it all. I could be the quitting kind. Or not. I could be the kind of man my mama and papa had raised, or not. I rose to my feet and did the best I could to scrape the worst of the mud off my coat and pants. "Sarah's going to be somebody's horse," I said to myself. "And I'm sure as hell gonna make sure she's mine.

Voices have been, and always will be, too afraid to speak with as much volume as a book. That’s why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.

You’ve been silent your whole life. You were silent when we met, silent when you suffered. Silent when life kept hitting you. I was like that too, a little. But not like you. You are a stillness. And I tried to move you. It didn’t work. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t move me. I heard everything you didn’t say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn’t shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.” ― Tarryn Fisher, Mud Vein

Has estado en silencio toda tu vida. Estabas en silencio cuando nos conocimos, en silencio cuando sufrías. En silencio cuando la vida seguía golpeándote. Yo era así también, un poco. Pero no como tú. Tú eres una quietud. E intenté moverte. No funcionó. Pero eso no significa que tú no me hayas movido. Escuché todo lo que no decías. Lo escuche tan fuerte que no podía apagarlo. Tu silencio, Senna, lo escuchaba muy fuerte.

Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, "I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which whose clench who do not depend on stimulus." What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.

Maybe the real me kept running on that trail, and what he grabbed was a different part. Maybe you could detach from the ugly things that happened to you. But even as I opened the door I knew it wasn't true. I felt to much fear.

I felt all of existence swelling in my veins. Letting my umbrella drop, I flung back my head to open myself to the wind and the suns. It was as though in the course of one night I had cast away the emptiness I had so long held in my arms.

Summer comes, bringing rumors of a tiger. The air is close and sweat-sticky. Cicadas, crickets, sighs, a dark ratcheting. A time for lingering after lamps are lit, for windows swung wide—a languorous heat in ordinary times, a loosening. But this year the tiger presses its claw against the vein of the town, and all Sweetwater shivers. A few chickens went missing three days back, and a side of beef. A guard dog was found with its throat slashed. Yesterday a woman fainted while hanging laundry and woke gibbering about a creature behind her sheets. A print left in the mud. Fear is this summer’s excitement, as hoops were last summer’s, and syrup over crushed ice the summer before’s. Anna, of course, wants a taste.

Anyway … love and coke. The consequences for both are expensive: you get a mighty fine high, then you come barreling down, regretting every hour you spent reveling in something so dangerous. But you go back for more. You always go back for more. Unless you’re me.

If either of you gentlemen should forget himself, I will have his blood, or he will have mine.’ “‘Amen!’ called Daddy Gobseck as he put his pistols back in their place; ‘but a man must have blood in his veins though before he can risk it, my son, and you have nothing but mud in yours.

The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind. What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself. Her brain going dim to all else, but flaming up in precise points of pain, personal injury, lost dreams. Every other loved one receding as though across a vast ice floe, shrinking to black dots waving tiny arms, out ofhearing. Then the rope thrown over the beam, the sleeping pill dropped in the palm with the long, lying lifeline, the window thrown open, the oven turned on, whatever. They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. And we had to smear our muzzles in their last traces, of mud marks on the floor, trunks kicked out from under them, we had to breathe forever the air of the rooms in which they killed themselves. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out ofthose rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will.

People lie. They use you and they lie, all the while feeding you bullshit about being loyal and never leaving you. No one can make that promise, because life is all about seasons, and seasons change. I hate change. You can’t rely on it, you can only rely on the fact that it will happen.

We all do don’t we? We are consumed with our own mortality. Some people eat right and exercise to preserve their lives, others drink and do drugs daring fate to take theirs, and then there are the floaters—the ones who try to ignore their mortality altogether because they’re afraid of it.

The seasons split at the seams: spring, summer, fall and winter. I’ve always pictured them as giant sacks filled with air and color and smell. When it’s time for one season to be over, the next seasons splits open and pours over the world, drowning its tired and waning predecessor with its strength.

Then his story started to sink into the surface, saturating him. A swampy mess at first. No plot, no arc, no thread. For a month, he simply threw handfuls of mud and gunk at the screen. He began to find rocks, then bones. And finally, he hit the vein of gold at the intersection of challenge and passion.

We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. And we had to smear our muzzles in their last traces, of mud marks on the floor, trunks kicked out from under them, we had to breathe forever the air of the rooms in which they killed themselves.

As far as I was concerned children had bipolar disorder. They were angry, unpredictable, emotional ambulance-sirens with pigtails, grubby hands and food-crusted mouths that twisted from smiles to frowns and back again as quick as a breath. No, thank you very much. If I wanted a three-foot warlord as my master, I’d hire a rabid monkey to do the job.

Narcissistic Supply (noun)-- He liked her but was too ashamed to admit it because she was off limits. So he ran her name down in the mud and made sure everyone would believe that he never cared. However, he kept one foot in her life because that is what obsession is like for a narcissist. They can't let you go, but they won't let others know that they are being immoral. If they can't have you then everyone will think your crazy and no one will ever believe your story. Obsession runs in their veins and they will never give you up. You have become their dirty little secret, their narcissistic supply. They like the rivalry and jealousy they created because it means they are desired by everyone. It doesn't matter if they divorced their ex and got a new woman in their life. That person will be told the same lie about you and they will continue with this obsession that you still care about them. When in reality you loathe their very existence. At the very heart of narcissistic supply is obsession and this deep seeded feeling that they are missing out.

The mind splices fragments of sensation and language into story after story. The blood in my veins and every blade of grass is oxygen, sugar, photosynthesis, genetic expression, electrochemistry, and time. I watch clouds crush the last bit of pink sky. Breath slips even as I inhale, even as snow falls out of season and mud thaws, even as lightning ignites a late spring.

You don’t have to be alone. We are mostly born that way, though. We grow up being nurtured to believe that the other half of our soul is somewhere out there. And since there are six billion people inhabiting our planet, chances are one of them is for you. To find that person, to find your soul-piece, or your great love, we must count on our paths diverging, the tangling of lives, the soft whispering of one soul recognizing another.

—. ¿Alguna vez has escuchado música con palabras? —No. —¿Por qué no? —Debido a que la simplicidad habla más fuerte. —Me aclaré la garganta y miré al frente. Sonaba como una tonta. Sentí que me miraba, cortando dentro de mí como a uno de sus pacientes. Yo no quiero ser diseccionada. —Se necesita simplicidad para crear complejidad —dijo—. Lo entiendo. Supongo que el exceso puede obstruir tu creatividad. —Exactamente. —Me encogí de hombros—. Así es —dije en voz baja.

It’s a painful thing to look inside yourself and see the whys and the hows of your clockwork. You are a lot uglier than you think, plenty more selfish than you are ever likely to admit. So, you ignore what’s inside of you. Thinking if you don’t acknowledge it, it’s not really there. Until someone unlikely comes along and cracks you. They see every dark corner, and they get it. And they tell you it’s okay to have dark corners, instead of making you feel ashamed of them.

You believe in a person’s permanence because humans have a tendency to stick to you when life is good. I call them honey summers. I’ve had enough honey summers in life to know that people leave you when winter comes. When life frosts you over and you’re shivering and layering on as much protection as you can just to survive. You don’t even notice it at first. The cold makes you too numb to see clearly. Then all of a sudden you look up and the snow is starting to melt, and you realize you spent the winter alone.

Hay una cuerda que nos conecta, que no es visible al ojo. Tal vez cada persona tiene más de un alma a la que están conectados, y sobre todo el mundo existen aquellas cuerdas invisibles. Tal vez las posibilidades de que encontrarás a todas y cada una de tus almas gemelas son escasas. Pero a veces eres lo suficientemente afortunado para toparte con una. Y sientes una atracción. Y no es tanto como una opción de amarlos por sus defectos y por tus diferencias, pero prefieres amarlos sin siquiera intentar. Amas sus defectos.

What’s the difference?” I asked him. “Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?” “One is a choice, and one is not.” “There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye,” he said. “Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings.” As if to make his point, his finger traced a black ribbon that ran through my horse’s mane. “Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

His grip tightened and he closed the distance between us, his mouth catching mine in a kiss that made my aching heart throb with the most painful kind of hope. I gripped his shirt in my fists and dragged him closer as I kissed him like the sky might cave in if I didn’t, even though it was more likely that it would if I did. Thunder crashed like an explosion overhead, freezing cold rain pelted down on us and lightning slammed into the ground behind us. But I didn’t care. I would gladly take the rage of the heavens in payment for this moment in his arms. Darius pulled me closer, growling hungrily as his tongue pushed into my mouth and he kissed me savagely, filthily, desperately. I pushed up onto my tiptoes, my body pressing flush to his as I wound my arms round his neck and my heart pounded to a brutal beat like it wanted to force its way out ofmy chest and meet with his. Lightning struck the ground so close that a crackle of electricity danced up my spine. I flinched, but my grip on Darius only tightened. I dropped the barriers on my magic and Darius’s power flooded through me on a tide of ecstasy as we merged our essences together. We were meant to be together like this, it was painted beneath my skin and through my veins, even my magic ached for him and yearned for the caress of his power. Thunder boomed and I growled in defiance, lifting my hand to cast a shield of solid air magic around us, cutting off the storm completely. Darius’s magic flowed alongside mine into the shield, the strength of our will blocking out the will of the stars. The earth rocked savagely beneath our feet and we fell. Darius kept ahold of me as he hit the ground on his back and I tumbled aside for a moment, but I wasn’t going to let them drive us apart. I shoved myself to my knees, crawling over his legs as he pushed up on his elbows and kissed me again. His fingers slid through my wet hair and his stubble grazed my skin as he kissed me so hard it was bruising, punishing, branding and yet it wasn’t enough. My heart was aching, tears pricking the backs of my eyes as I fought to keep hold of him while the storm hammered against our magic, determined to tear us apart again. I poured magic from my body to hold the shield as rain slammed against it so hard that the air rattled around us. Darius dragged me against him and I could feel how much he wanted me in every hard line and ridge of his body. We were both drenched, covered in mud and utterly incapable of giving one shit about it. Lightning slammed into the shield and I gasped as it almost buckled, breaking our kiss as I looked up at the black sky above us. More lightning split the clouds apart, striking the ground all around us again and again, making the earth rock even more violently. As a second bolt hit our shield, I almost lost control of it and I could feel my power waning as I threw everything I had into maintaining it. We only had seconds before it was going to collapse and I reached out to catch Darius’s jaw in my grip, looking into his dark eyes with a pang of longing. “I’m sorry I did this to us,” I breathed. I might not have been sure everything between us was fixed yet, but I was beginning to believe it could be and I was starting to think I’d made the wrong choice when I’d been offered it. “It wasn’t you,” he replied, pain flickering though his gaze. “It was both of us,” I disagreed, tears mixing with the rain on my cheeks. (Tory)

Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. It is unending. I heave myself over the final lip and strain to pull myself clear of the edge. I clear the deep powder snow from in front of my face. I lie there hyperventilating. Then I clear my mask of the ice that my breath has formed in the freezing air. I unclip off the rope while still crouching. The line is now clear for Neil to follow up. I get to my feet and start staggering onward. I can see this distant cluster of prayer flags semisubmerged in the snow. Gently flapping in the wind, I know that these flags mark the true summit--the place of dreams. I feel this sudden surge of energy beginning to rise within me. It is adrenaline coursing around my veins and muscles. I have never felt so strong--and yet so weak--all at the same time. Intermittent waves of adrenaline and fatigue come and go as my body struggles to sustain the intensity of these final moments. I find it strangely ironic that the very last part of this immense climb is so gentle a slope. A sweeping curve--curling along the crest of the ridge toward the summit. Thank God. It feels like the mountain is beckoning me up. For the first time, willing me to climb up onto the roof of the world. I try to count the steps as I move, but my counting becomes confused. I am now breathing and gasping like a wild animal in an attempt to devour the oxygen that seeps into my mask. However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer. But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer. I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask. Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer. I stagger on.

It was the combination of many factors," Dr. Hornicker said in his last report, written for no medical reason but just because he couldn't get the girls out of his head. "With most people," he said, "suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty." But this is all a chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind. What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself. Her brain going dim to all else, but flaming up in precise points of pain, personal injury, lost dreams. Every other loved one receding as though across a vast ice floe, shrinking to black dots waving tiny arms, out of hearing. Then the rope thrown over the beam, the sleeping pill dropped in the palm with the long, lying lifeline, the window thrown open, the oven turned on, whatever. They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. And we had to smear our muzzles in their last traces, of mud marks on the floor, trunks kicked out from under them, we had to breathe forever the air of the rooms in which they killed themselves. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.

My pulse thunders in my ears. It feels like my heart’s rattling my ribs loose, it’s pounding so violently inside my chest. If he touches me any further, I won’t be strong enough to resist Ren anymore. I’ll throw myself at him, beg him to give me everything for just a little while. To give me for now until he can have forever with her. Her. God, my blood boils, and a kick of anger surges through my veins. I hate her. I’m wildly jealous of this woman, who I can only assume is entirely, completely worthy of him. And I know, I trust that she is, because I trust Ren. He’s measured and thoughtful. He has his head screwed on straight. He values the right things. She’s probably an understated beauty, because Ren’s too wholesome to need a knockout—he only asks for beauty from within. She’s one of those rescue-shelter volunteers who bakes perfectly circular chocolate chip cookies and makes friends with all the grandmas on the block. She wants three kids—two boys and a girl—and she loves to scrapbook. She also reads those criminally sex-free romances and is the least erotically adventurous woman on the planet— Whoa, there, Francesca. Getting a little nasty, aren’t we? Well, yes. My thoughts have turned uncharitable. That’s my jealousy talking. That’s my covetous envy. A fierce possessiveness for someone I have no right to. An unwarranted, unfair animosity toward a woman I should be happy for. “I want to apologize, Frankie. About last night.” I spin, tugged out of my thoughts. “What?” Ren frowns up at me from his crouched position, petting Pazza. “I don’t remember everything, because that headache was…unearthly painful, and I’d taken one of the pills for it that Amy prescribed me, but I have a vague memory of being very into hand holding.” Heat rushes through me as I bite my lip. God, you’d think we’d made out, the way thinking of it affects me. “You were.” He grimaces. “It was unprofessional of me. I’m sorry.” His face transforms to a wide smile as Pazza licks his face, perching her muddy paws on his knees. “Pazza, down.” My voice is sharp, and she drops immediately, jogging over to me. Ren slowly stands with a look of wariness on his face. “What’s the matter?” “Nothing. Just Pazza. Sh-she’ll ruin your slacks.” I point at the grass and mud staining his knees. He smiles and shrugs. “I don’t care, Frankie. I can do my laundry. I’m a spot-treating wizard, actually.” “Of course, you are.” I can’t get a stain out of my clothes to save my life. Why do all these little things about him add up to something so perfectly right to me? Why does he have to be so wonderful? Why do I have to be so fucked up?

...wszyscy jesteśmy czymś spętani, bo potrzebujemy czegoś, co będzie nas podtrzymywać. To, czym opleciesz swoją duszę, determinuje to, czym się staniesz...

Ludzie nie są stworzeni do dźwigania ciężaru innych. Ledwie dajemy radę nieść własny.

Patrzenie w głąb siebie i oglądanie wszystkich elementów kierującego tobą mechanizmu sprawia ból. Człowiek zawsze jest dużo brzydszy, niż sądzi, i bardziej samolubny, niż kiedykolwiek chciałby przyznać. Dlatego ignorujesz to, co masz w środku. Myślisz, że jeśli nie będziesz o tym myśleć, to tak, jakby nie istniało. Aż pewnego dnia pojawia się ktoś, kto po prostu cię otwiera. Widzi wszystkie twoje mroczne zakamarki. Nie krytykuje cię jednak, lecz mówi, że to nic złego mieć w sobie takie miejsca.

Pierwszą osobą, z którą łączy cię jakakolwiek więź, jest twoja matka. To ona utrzymuje cię przy życiu, dzieląc się z tobą własną krwią, ciepłem i całym życiem. Kiedy podczas narodzin lekarz przecina pępowinę, powstaje nowa. Emocjonalna.

Ludzie kłamią. Wykorzystują cię i kłamią, przez cały czas wciskają ci kity o swojej lojalności i o tym, że cię nie nie zostawią. Nikt nie może ci tego obiecać...

...większość odważnych czynów sprowadza się do silnego poczucia obowiązku, podszytego jeszcze silniejszym wariactwem. Odwaga zawsze idzie w parze z szaleństwem.

Złe rzeczy się wydarzają, ponieważ żyjemy w świecie pełnym zła.

You've got my blood in yer veins, girl, and nothin can change that. You've got my name written in yer bones, Maraly Weaver. You can go take yer bath and eat yer fancy food and giggle with yer friend, but you'll always know deep down that you were born in the mud of the Strand along the mud of the Blapp and once that mud gets on you, nothin ever gets it off. What do you think runs thicker than the blood in yer veins?" "Love. Love runs stronger than blood. Deeper than any name you could give me.

I was standing on a battlefield aflame with silvery fire, clad in armor of deepest black that concealed mud and gore, the speckled evidence of war. My bloodied hands bore a great gold-handled broadsword whose onyx blade was veined with scrollwork that seemed almost illuminated from within. I swung the blade around me in slow, menacing circles that dared my enemy to approach. A shadowed figure stood nearby, and lifeless bodies—Descended and mortal—lay in a broad ring at my feet, as if they’d been thrown back by the force of a massive explosion. My face was grim, undaunted. Sad, I think—but strong. Unbreakably strong.

Someone could take your body, use it, beat it, treat it like it’s a piece of trash, but what hurts far worse than the actual physical attack is the darkness it injects into you.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.

Your friends have made you weak. Did they teach you how to cry like a babe at her mammy's side? Stranders don't cry, Maraly." "I'm not a Strander," she said, looking him in the eye. "Then I'll have to MAKE you one," Claxton barked. "You've got my blood in yer veins, girl, and nothin' can change that. You've got MY name written in yer bones, Maraly Weaver. You can go take yer bath and eat yer fancy food and giggle with yer friend, but you'll always know deep down that you were born in the mud of the Strand, along with the mud of the Blapp, and once that mud gets on you, NOTHIN' ever gets it off." Claxton seemed to know Maraly's deepest fear and was speaking it aloud. She had lain awake at night, fighting to believe that Gammon's fatherly love was real, that the change she had been feeling--the lightening of heart and the almost painful flashes of joy--was more than a silly girlish notion. She thought back to the day of the Battle of Kimera, when Gammon had looked her in the eye and held out his hand and asked if she would let him care for her. Even then something had bubbled up in the dry well of her soul, and over these last months she had felt that spring slowly fill her. With the coming of the warmer sun she had finally allowed herself to believe that the water was pure enough to drink--but every word Claxton spewed poisoned the water, darkened it, muddied it like the Mighty Blapp, and now she felt herself drowning in it. "I'm going to give you one last chance, girl. Either Claxton is yer father or Gammon is. Only one of those names is true to your nature. Answer carefully now. Who's your father?" Maraly shook her head and wept. She wished the Fangs would appear, or more Stranders--she had given up on wishing for Gammon. That sort of thing only happened in storybooks. "WHO'S YOUR FATHER?" Claxton bellowed. He struck her in the mouth. "You're a Strander down to the bone, girl! Who's your father? What do you think runs thicker than blood in your veins?" Maraly mumbled. "What?" Claxton shouted, clenching her throat tighter. She blinked through her tears and took a trembling breath, then looked him in the eye as fiercely as she could manage. "Love." "Love," Claxton sputtered. He snorted with laughter. Maraly sniffled and said, "Love runs stronger than blood. Deeper than any name you could give me." "You worthless dog," Claxton spat. He balled his fingers into a fist and reared back to strike. Maraly smiled through her tears. She knew she had chosen well, because she had BEEN chosen. She believed in her heart that Gammon was even now fighting to find her, that his affection was more real than the hand that gripped her throat and the first that was about to pound her. She closed her eyes and waited for the pain. But Claxton's blow never fell. He gasped and made a choking sound, and his grip on her neck loosened. Maraly crumpled to the ground, looking up at Claxton in confusion. He staggered backward and spun around, and she saw a knife in his back, buried to the hilt. "Maker help you, boy," said [Nurgabog's] thin, quavering voice. "Maker help me too.