The Listeners Maggie Stiefvater Quotes

Listen to you sounding all badass. I bet you're just listening to a CD called 'The Sounds of Crime' while you cruise for chicks outside the Old Navy in your Camaro.

I always listen to you. Except when I don't.

It tore my heart out, because I heard his voice. The wolves sang slowly behind him, bittersweet harmony, but all I heard was Sam. His howl trembled, rose, fell in anguish. I listened for a long time. I prayed for them to stop, to leave me alone, but at the same time I was desperately afraid they would. Long after the other voices had dropped away, Sam kept howling, very soft and slow. When he finally fell silent, the night felt dead.

You're assuming they would listen to me," I said. Cole lifted his hands off the roof of the Volkswagen; cloudy fingerprints evaporated seconds ater he did. "We all listen to you, Sam." He jumped to the pavement. "You just don't always talk to us.

I settled on the floor and whispered to Sam, “I want you to listen to me, if you can.” I leaned the side of my face against his ruff and remembered the golden wood he had shown me so long ago. I remembered the way the yellow leaves, the color of Sam’s eyes, fluttered and twisted, crashing butterflies, on their way to the ground. The slender white trunks of the birches, creamy and smooth as human skin. I remembered Sam standing in the middle of the wood, his arms stretched out, a dark, solid form in the dream of the trees. His coming to me, me punching his chest, the soft kiss. I remembered every kiss we’d ever had, and I remembered every time I’d curled in his human arms. I remembered the soft warmth of his breath on the back of my neck while we slept. I remembered Sam.

Today, Blue thought, is the day I stop listening to the future and start living it instead.

Tell me what to wish for." Tell me what to ask the sea for." "To be happy. Happiness." "I don't think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don't know how you would keep it." "You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn't that what you said?" "That's what I said. What do I need to hear?" "That tomorrow we'll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I'll save the house and you'll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner." "That's what I needed to hear.

That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.

The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig. “Piss up a rope,” Ronan said. Gansey, unoffended, waited. Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, “Squash one, squash two, s—” “Not that one,” both Adam and Gansey said. “I’m not listening to that for three hours,” Adam said. Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel.

I missed the sound of her shuffling her homework while I listened to music on her bed. I missed the cold of her feet against my legs when she climbed into bed. I missed the shape of her shadow where it fell across the page of my book. I missed the smell of her hair and the sound of her breath and my Rilke on her nightstand and her wet towel thrown over the back of her desk chair. It felt like I should be sated after having a whole day with her, but it just made me miss her more.

Listening to him tell the story now, it was clear to Adam that Glendower was more than a historical figure to Gansey. He was everything Gansey wished he could be: wise and brave, sure of his path, touched by the supernatural, respected by all, survived by his legacy.

As the sun shines low and red across the water, I wade into the ocean. The water is still high and brown and murky with the memory of the storm, so if there’s something below it, I won’t know it. But that’s part of this, the not knowing. The surrender to the possibilities beneath the surface. It wasn’t the ocean that killed my father, in the end. The water is so cold that my feet go numb almost at once. I stretch my arms out to either side of me and close my eyes. I listen to the sound of water hitting water. The raucous cries of the terns and the guillemots in the rocks of the shore, the piercing, hoarse questions of the gulls above me. I smell seaweed and fish and the dusky scent of the nesting birds onshore. Salt coats my lips, crusts my eyelashes. I feel the cold press against my body. The sand shifts and sucks out from under my feet in the tide. I’m perfectly still. The sun is red behind my eyelids. The ocean will not shift me and the cold will not take me.

Cabeswater was such a good listener.

Blue got herself back together and then turned on the radio. Adam hadn't even realized the ancient tape deck worked, but after a hissing few seconds, a tape inside jangled a tune. Noah began to sing along at once. 'Squash one, squash two-' Adam pawed for the radio at the same time as Blue. The tape ejected with enough force that Noah stretched a hand to catch it. 'That song. What are you doing with that in your player?' Demanded Blue. 'Do you listen to that recreationally? How did that song escape from the Internet?' Noah cackled and showed them the cassette. It boasted a handmade label marked with Ronan's handwriting: PARRISH'S HONDAYOTA ALONE TIME. The other side was A SHITBOX SINGALONG. 'Play it! Play it!' Noah said gaily, waving the tape. 'Noah. Noah! Take that away from him,' Adam said.

I smiled sweetly at his embarressment, beginning to walk again, kicking up golden leaves. I heard him scuffling leaves behind me. "And what was the point of this again?" Forget it!" Sam said. "Do you you like this place or not?" I stoped in my tracks, spinning to face him. "Hey." I pointed at him; he raised his eyebrows and stopped in his tracks. "You didn't think Jack would be here at all, did you?" His thick black eyebrows went up even farther. Did you evan intend to look for him at all?" He held his hands up as if a surrender. "What do you want me to say?" You were trying to see if I would reconize it, wern't you?" I took anouther step, colsing the distance between us. I could feel the heat of his body, even without touching him, in the increasing cold of the day. "YOU told me about this wood somehow. How did you show it to me?" I keep trying to tell you. You wont listen. Because you're stubbon. It's how we speek- it's the only words we have. Just pictures. Just simple little picters. You HAVE changed Grace. Just not your skin. I want you to believe me." His hands were still raise, but he was starting to grin at me in the failing light. So you brought me here to see this." I stepped forward again, and he stepped back. Do you like it?" Under false pretence." Anouther step forward; anouther back. The grine widened So do you like it?" When you knew we wouldn't come across anybody else." His teeth flashed in his grin. "Do you like it?" I punched my hands into his chest. "You know I love it. You knew I would." I went to punch him, and he grabed my wrists. For a moment we stood there like that, him looking down at me with a grin half-caught on his face, and me lookingup at him: Still Life with Boy and Girl. It would've been the perfect moment to kiss me, but he didn't. He just looked at me and looked at me, and by the time I relizeed I could just as easily kiss him, I noticed that his grin was slipping away. Sam slowly lowered my wrists and relesed them. "I'm glad." he said very quietly. My arms still hung by my sides, right where Sam had put them. I frowned at him. "You were supposed to kiss me." I thought about it." I just kept looking at the soft, sad shape of his lips, looking just like his voice sounded. I was probably staring, but I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted him to kiss me and how stupide it was to want it so badly. "Why don't you?" He leaned over and gave mr the lightest of kisses. His lips, cool and dry, ever so polite and incredibly maddening. "I have to get inside soon," he whispered "It's getting cold

Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, “Squash one, squash two, s—” “Not that one,” both Adam and Gansey said. “I’m not listening to that for three hours,” Adam said. Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel.

She wanted, she wanted, she wanted, would it ever stop, this wanting, this never getting, this never-shrinking chasm between need and reality.

Hey, I heard this great song,” he said. Gansey tried to tune out the sound of a raven horking down a hot dog. “Want a listen?” Gansey and Ronan rarely agreed on music, but Gansey shrugged an agreement. Removing his headphones from his neck, Ronan placed them on Gansey´s ears - they smelled a little dusty and birdy from proximity to Chainsaw. Sound came through the headphones: “Squash one, squash tw -” Gansey tore them off as Ronan dissolved into manic laughter, which Chainsaw echoed, flapping her wings, both of them terrible and amused. “You bastard,” Gansey said savagely. “You bastard. You betrayed my trust.

Today is the day I stop listening to the future and start living it instead.

Wealth is just security. Luxury is living carefree.

She hadn’t moved an inch, and she missed it here already.

Water wasn’t just one thing; it could be rain, snow, ice, and rivers.

The world shouts at you. The waking world, the dreaming world. You don't have to listen to it, but you do. And until you learn to shout louder than it, we're going to keep having this happen.

He turned, mug in hand, and suddenly they were an inch apart. She could smell the mint in his mouth. She saw his throat move as he swallowed. She was furious at her body for betraying her, for wanting him differently than any of the other boys, for refusing to listen to her insistence that they were just friends.

When June looked back at herself, she remembered a blank person, an empty mirror. Other children loudly explored the world to discover who they wanted to be, but June had been silent and featureless as the surface of a mountain lake. She just listened.

June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury. June had become a good listener.

After surviving a childhood too boring to repeat in polite company, he’d become a DJ at an easy listening station too boring to play in polite company.

On the night this story begins, both a saint and a scientist were listening to miracles.

Even he, with all his life experience and his training, saw loveliness in these surroundings. Everything logical in him was unnerved; everything else swooned.

Just because something isn’t beautiful doesn’t make it ugly. The necessary is very rarely beautiful.

What June believed and what needed to be done were not always the same thing. What she wanted and what the hotel needed were not always the same thing. Who she was and who she had to be were not always the same thing. Every day she drank four glasses of that dissonance and swallowed it.

ARE YOU LISTENING, GLENDOWER? I AM COMING TO FIND YOU!" Gansey's voice, ebullient and ringing, echoed off the tree-covered slopes around the field. Adam and Blue found him standing in the middle of a clear, pale path, his arms stretched out and his head tilted back as he shouted into the air.

He looked at the side of her face, at her pensive mouth, her clever eyes. He couldn’t bear it anymore. “June, what am I to you? The breeze made her flutter her eyelashes low. “What do you want to be to me?” “Everything,” he replied. “I want to be what makes you smile when we come home to each other and I want to be what makes you settle under a full moon and I want to be what makes you wild when I’m gone and I want to be what makes you laugh when I’m inside you and I want to be what makes you weep when I die and I want to be everything else in between and I want to take you out into the world and see it with you, but if it has to be here, then here is where I land.” Words rarely came easily to Tucker, but they didn’t stop coming then, breaking through the surface until there were no more left. He wanted her to know. He wanted every part of her to know, in a thorough way, in a way that left no room for doubt. June whispered, “Then that’s what you should be to me.

As they walked, June found she could not remember the last time she had spent this many minutes on so little. A stroll through a place that could serve her no good in the future. Nor could she recall the last time she’d spent so much time with someone who required so little from her. Tucker’s silence didn’t demand her to fill it. His unhappiness, if he had any, was not currently her task to solve. She knew he would have made this walk on his own, just as she would have, but she also knew he preferred it with the wordless company. She was free to simply be herself; he was free to simply be himself, alongside each other.

You're wondering if this is real. You want proof this is an actual encounter and not just a bit of subconcious mindfuckery. What is real? Listen: You fall asleep, dream of feathers, and wake up with a raven in your hands, and you're still asking, What is real?

And what else would he get into? Kavinsky's dead so--Jesus Chrirst, listen to me. Jesus Christ." The cave walls crumbled yet more; the ritual before had been imperfect. Gansey sat back against the wall and closed his eyes. Adam watched him swallow. Again he heard Gansey's voice in the cave. "It's okay," Adam said. He did not care that Joseph Kavinsky was dead, but he liked that Gansey did. "I know what you meant.

Sitting in the empty classroom and listening to the faraway sounds of noisy students in the cafeteria, I was reminded of feeling sick in class and being sent to the school nurse. The nurse’s office had that same muffled sense of distance, like a satellite to the loud planet that was the school.

It was a difficult journey to picture unless you’d taken it yourself. For many years, June had thought she was the woman she was despite who she’d been as a child. Now she knew she was the woman she was because of who she’d been as a child. Only a person who understood nothing about others had the patience to so thoroughly study them.

Ronan Lynch," [Gansey] said. It was the voice Ronan couldn't not listen to. It was sure in every way that Ronan was not. "Stop this right now.

We are living an international incident.

he wanted to put her words in his mouth.

Gansey touched his lower lip very gently. He lowered his hand, and he said, “Wake up.” He said it like he had said stop earlier. He said it in a voice Adam had heard countless times, a voice he could never not listen to.

She had listened to the phone conversation and following discussion with great interest. Helen very much enjoyed climbing down into other people's lives and muddling around there with a pail and a shovel and possibly one of those old-fashioned striped bathing suits with the legs and arms.

Maybe for Mom’s birthday. I have to go. Things might get ugly.” The cell phone speaker made Helen’s laugh a hissing, pitchless thing. “Listen to you, sounding all badass. I bet you’re just listening to a CD called ‘The Sounds of Crime’ while you cruise for chicks outside the Old Navy in your Camaro.

Gansey said abruptly. "In we go. Ronan, don't forget to set the directional markers as we go. We're counting on you. Don't just stare at me. Nod like you understand. Good. You know what? Give them to Jane." "What?" Ronan sounded betrayed. Blue accepted the markers - round, plastic discs with arrows drawn on them. She hadn't realized how nervous she was until she had them in her hands; it felt good to have something concrete to do. "I want you to whistle or hum or sing, Ronan, and keep track of time," Gansey said. "You have got to be shitting me," Ronan replied. "Me." Gansey peered down the tunnel. "I know you know a lot of the songs all the way through, and can do them the same sped and length every time. Because you had to memorize all of those tunes for the Irish music competitions." Blue and Adam exchanged a delighted look. The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig. "Piss up a rope," Ronan said. Gansey, unoffended, waited. Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, "Squash one, squash two, s-" "Not that one," both Adam and Gansey said. "I'm not listening to that for three hours," Adam said. Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel. And they went in deeper.

Adam hadn't even realized the ancient tape deck worked, but after a hissing few seconds, a tape inside jangled a tun. Noah began to sing along at once. "Squash one, squash two--" Adam pawed for the radio at the same time as Blue. The tape ejected with enough force that Noah stretched a hand to catch it. "That song. What are you doing with that in your player?" demanded Blue. "Do you listen to that recreationally? How did that song escape from the internet?" Noah cackled and showed them the cassette. It boasted a handmade label marked with Ronan's handwriting: Parrish's Hondayota Alone Time. The other side was A Shitbox Singalong. "Play it! Play it!" Noah said gaily, waving the tape. "Noah. Noah! Take that away from him," Adam said.

I draw myself up next to her and look at her profile, making no effort to disguise my attention, here, where there is only Puck to see me. The evening sun loves her throat and her cheekbones. Her hair the color of cliff grass rises and falls over her face in the breeze. Her expression is less ferocious than usual, less guarded. I say, “Are you afraid?” Her eyes are far away on the horizon line, out to the west where the sun has gone but the glow remains. Somewhere out there are my capaill uisce, George Holly’s America, every gallon of water that every ship rides on. Puck doesn’t look away from the orange glow at the end of the world. “Tell me what it’s like. The race.” What it’s like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It’s the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It’s speed, if you’re lucky. It’s life and it’s death or it’s both and there’s nothing like it. Once upon a time, this moment — this last light of evening the day before the race — was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life. “There’s no one braver than you on that beach.” Her voice is dismissive. “That doesn’t matter.” “It does. I meant what I said at the festival. This island cares nothing for love but it favors the brave.” Now she looks at me. She’s fierce and red, indestructible and changeable, everything that makes Thisby what it is. She asks, “Do you feel brave?” The mare goddess had told me to make another wish. It feels thin as a thread to me now, that gift of a wish. I remember the years when it felt like a promise. “I don’t know what I feel, Puck.” Puck unfolds her arms just enough to keep her balance as she leans to me, and when we kiss, she closes her eyes. She draws back and looks into my face. I have not moved, and she barely has, but the world feels strange beneath me. “Tell me what to wish for,” I say. “Tell me what to ask the sea for.” “To be happy. Happiness.” I close my eyes. My mind is full of Corr, of the ocean, of Puck Connolly’s lips on mine. “I don’t think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don’t know how you would keep it.” The breeze blows across my closed eyelids, scented with brine and rain and winter. I can hear the ocean rocking against the island, a constant lullaby. Puck’s voice is in my ear; her breath warms my neck inside my jacket collar. “You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn’t that what you said?” I tilt my head so that her mouth is on my skin. The kiss is cold where the wind blows across my cheek. Her forehead rests against my hair. I open my eyes, and the sun has gone. I feel as if the ocean is inside me, wild and uncertain. “That’s what I said. What do I need to hear?” Puck whispers, “That tomorrow we’ll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I’ll save the house and you’ll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner.” I say, “That is what I needed to hear.” “Do you know what to wish for now?” I swallow. I have no wishing-shell to throw into the sea when I say it, but I know that the ocean hears me nonetheless. “To get what I need.

Richard Campbell Gansey III, Ronan's oldest friend, was in the country for the wedding, and so was Blue Sargent. They had just graduated from the same sociology program with two very different concentrations. Both of them were very excited to talk about what they had studied to anyone who would listen, but no one except for each other was very excited to hear about it. Some something trenches something something artifacts something something secret doors something something trees something something primary sources.

It was perplexing to Adam how he had regarded this as normal for so long. He remembered how the neighbors used to turn away from his bruised face; he used to think, stupidly, that they said nothing because they thought he had somehow deserved it. Now, though, he wondered how many of them had huddled on the floor in front of their sofas, or hidden in their rooms, or cried beneath the little porch in the bitter rain. He felt a sudden urge to save all these other Adams hidden in plain view, though he didn't know if they would listen to him.

Before the lightning strike, as Tony had listened to Marisita’s confession, he had been looking down from this very great height onto Bicho Raro and he had been thinking about the enormity of what they were doing tonight and how this entire family had come together to do it. He was thinking about Joaquin’s incredible promise. And finally he was thinking that it wasn’t all bad being a radio giant, as long as you looked for the things you could do as a giant that you couldn’t do as anything else, like hold up someone else’s voice so it was just a little louder.

Just don’t say anything at all, Hennessy told herself, but she’d never been good at listening to advice, even her own. “Dear old mum. What did she teach me? Mmm…Don’t leave cigarettes burning on the piano, never mix pills on a school night, stay single, die young.” Machkowsky’s mouth hardened; she didn’t look up from the art. She said, “I always wondered what it must have been like to be her daughter. So she was no different at home, then?” Hennessy hesitated. “I had hoped her behavior was more of an act,” Machkowsky said. “Performance art. I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.” It was unexpectedly jarring to be seen. Hennessy had not come here to be known. She had not come here for sympathy from a stranger, especially not for a childhood she’d thought only looked appalling from the inside. Did it matter, to know that someone had thought about her in her youthful suffering? She would have liked the answer to be no. It was simpler. But the way her breath felt all tangled up in her throat told her the answer was yes. It mattered.

The very first dram Ronan had ever been truly proud of, truly euphoric over, had been a copy. It had been in high school. Ronan wasn't good at surviving high school and he wasn't good at surviving friendship, and so while his friend Gansey's back was turned, he'd stolen Gansey's car. It was a beautiful car. A 1973 bright orange Camaro with stripes right up its hood and straight down its ass. Ronan had wanted to drive it for months, despite Gansey forbidding it. Maybe because of him forbidding it. Within hours of stealing it, Ronan had totaled it. Gansey hadn't wanted him to drive it because he thought he'd grind the clutch, or curb it, or burn out the tires, or maybe, maybe blow the engine. And here Ronan had totaled it. Ronan had loved Richard C. Gansey III far more than he loved himself at that point, and he hadn't known how he was ever going to face him when he returned from out of town. And then, Joseph Kavinsky had taught him to dream a copy. Before that, all of Ronan's dreams--that he knew about, Matthew didn't count--had been accidents and knickknacks, the bizarre and the useless. When he'd successfully copied a car, an entire car, he'd been out of his mind with glee. The dreamt car had been perfect down to the last detail. Exactly like the original. The pinnacle of dreaming. Now a copy was the least impressive thing to him. He could copy anything he put his mind to. That just made him a very ethereal photocopier. A one-man 3-D printer. The dreams he was proud of now were the dreams that were originals. Dreams that couldn't exist in any other way. Dreams that took full advantage of the impossibility of dreamspace in a way that was cunning or lovely or effective or all of the above. The sundogs. Lindenmere. Dreams that had to be dreams. In the past, all his good dreams like this were gifts from Lindenmere or accidents rather than things he had consciously constructed. He was beginning to realize, after listening to Bryde, that this was because he'd been thinking too small. His consciousness was slowly becoming the shape of the concrete, waking world, and it was shrinking all his dreams to the probable. He needed to start realizing that possible and impossible didn't mean the same thing for him as they did for other people. He needed to break himself of the habit of rules, of doubts, of physics. His "what if" had grown so tame. "You are made of dreams and this world is not for you." He would not let the nightwash take him and Matthew. He would not let this world kill him slowly. He deserved a place here, too. He woke.

Adam hadn't even realized the ancient tape deck worked, but after a hissing few seconds, a tape inside jangled a tune. Noah began to sing along at once. "Squash one, squash two--" Adam pawed for the radio at the same time as Blue. The tape ejected with enough force that Noah stretched a hand to catch it. "That song. What are you doing with that in your player?" demanded Blue. "Do you listen to that recreationally? How did that song escape from the internet?" Noah cackled and showed them the cassette. It boasted a handmade label marked with Ronan's handwriting: Parrish's Hondayota Alone Time. The other side was A Shitbox Singalong. "Play it! Play it!" Noah said gaily, waving the tape. "Noah. Noah! Take that away from him," Adam said.

He remembered how the neighbors used to turn away from his bruised face; he used to think, stupidly, that they said nothing because they thought he had somehow deserved it. Now, though, he wondered how many of them had huddled on the floor in front of their sofas, or hidden in their rooms, or cried beneath the little porch in the bitter rain. He felt a sudden urge to save all these other Adams hidden in plain view, though he didn’t know if they would listen to him. It struck him as a Gansey or a Blue impulse, and as he held that tiny, heroic spark in his mind, he realized that it was only because he believed that he had saved himself that he could imagine saving someone else.

I was listening to what I’d recorded while I was driving back. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then: my voice. Then the Pig stopped.” “Coincidence?” Ronan asked. “I think not.” It was meant to be sarcastic. Gansey had said I don’t believe in coincidences so often that he no longer needed to. Gansey asked, “Well, what do you think?” “Holy grail, finally,” Ronan replied, too sarcastic to be any use at all.

Look, Lynch," Kavinsky said. "It's simple. Wrap your tiny Celtic brain around this concept. What did your mom do when your goldfish died?" Ronan stopped pacing. "I told you. It's not your rice rocket. I can get him another but it won't be the same. He doesn't want another one, he wants this one." "I'm going to be fucking patient with you," Kavinsky said, "because you've had a head injury. You're not listening to the words I say." Ronan threw a hand toward the Pig. "This is not a goldfish.

You really are a shithead,” he told her. “Check it,” she said, digging into her jacket pocket. “I dreamt myself a better dreaming mask.” The mask dangling in her fingers had an intricate pattern like threads through marble, or like lace. Ronan shook his head, and for several long minutes, they sat there in the grass, listening to the sounds of the city around them. The sun was very good. Winter was not yet over, but one could tell that it would be over, which was nearly as good.

Listen, Bryde said, and Ronan listened. What did he hear? His pulse in his ears. The stir of his blood. The movement of his soul. The hum of the thing that was filling him. It couldn’t be happiness, he thought, because he was far from his brothers and from Adam. He worried about them, and surely he couldn’t be happy if he was worried. But it felt a lot like happiness.

She had been a storm that didn't move roofs, but she'd spent a year watching storms that did. Instead of striking off on her own, as she'd always done, she decided to learn to listen. In spring, she went to Eilean Glan, and she listened to the old queen teach girls to heal. In summer, she went to Ardbarrach, and as the bells rang, she listened to the value of order. In fall, she returned home long enough for her mother to prepare for the journey, and then, as they rode around a new and fragile Scotland, she listened to her mother talk about peace. In winter, she returned to DunBroch to think about all she had learned over the long, dark season.

We all listen to you, Sam.” He jumped to the pavement. “You just don’t always talk to us.

but her expression was somehow uncivilized.

The Avallon simply couldn’t run without this division between identity and soul.

No,” June said. “I belong to the Avallon.

June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but the ones that weren’t.

Her staff thinking he was haunting the place! But why not? Belief was contagious. When you believed in one intangible thing, why not a second, why not a third. If God, then why not the listeners in the water, if the listeners in the water, why not ghosts, if ghosts, why not unicorns—

For a moment, June thought she hated it. Everything about this job, this hotel. She remembered that sweet, free water beneath the church at Casto Springs, and for a moment, she felt a howling miserable envy, so violently strong that she wondered at how long it must have been inside her, unspoken, unacknowledged.

She was better than she used to be, but a change of scenery always provoked her. Food tasted loud. Clothes sang at her skin. Perfumes screamed in living color. Voices braided during conversations, seeming to be in the wrong language no matter what was being said. Poor Behavior loomed inside her, waiting for an opportunity to explode out of her.

They had made something wonderful together, but the cost of luxury had become too steep. She didn’t know that what the Avallon would be after this, but she knew it would never be this again. With her expression, June told her beloved staff: Thank you. With her heart, June told the water: Be free.

You would have left without giving these boots to me if I hadn’t already been out in the rain.” “I didn’t think you’d speak with me.” “It ain’t right for me to take fire for a version of me you’ve invented. Of course I would’ve spoken with you. We have unfinished business, don’t you think?

Kindness was a virtue, but in evil places, empathy punished the wearer.

It was shocking how different her feeling of a task’s length was from the reality of it.

For just one moment, small enough to fit between breaths, June thought she would never be happy ever again. This alien thought was both pure and painless. She had been happy yesterday, but she would not be happy tomorrow. Or tomorrow. Or tomorrow. The version of her who grinned was in the past.

Miss Hudson,” he said carefully. “Bureau policy demands we observe subjects in place. Do not approach her.” “Why would I approach her?” He said, “You seem like the sort of child who ate bugs.” “I was actually a very quiet child. More like Hannelore Wolfe.” “I find that very hard to believe, Miss Hudson.” “That’s because you’ve never met anyone like me before.

Sandy Gilfoyle still gazed vaguely toward the rain. Citizen wasn’t afraid of him, she thought. She wanted to believe the terrier had secret knowledge about good and evil, but she also knew that he’d vomited the day before after eating trash from the suite’s wastebasket.

She was unused to receiving a gift she wanted.

It was a difficult journey to picture unless you’d taken it yourself. For many years, June had thought she was the woman she was despite who she’d been as a child. Now she knew she was the woman she was because of who she’d been as a child. Only a person who understood nothing about others had the patience to do thoroughly study them.

She was reminded of the very first moment she had seen the Avallon at the top of the hill. What a wonderful island, she’d thought, so far from the problems of the weary world. But she could no longer evoke that precise feeling. It was impossible to hear the orchestra crooning over laughter and not think about how, elsewhere in the world, the innocent were being sentenced to death.

The boots fit so perfectly around her Mary Janes that it seemed likely he had considered not only the size of her feet but what she always wore upon them. The mink was soft, delicate, warm against her cold ankles. Already she could imagine her daily walks to and from her apartment with them; she could picture the silhouette of them, so much nicer than the bread bags some of her staff used or her own neglected basic plastic galoshes. She was unused to receiving a gift she wanted.

That made the Burns Night ball more than a party. It made it a decision: Would parties still happen in these times?

You are making yourself one of my life’s biggest obstacles,” June told her. “Darling, if that’s true,” said 411, “you’re life isn’t that bad.

Every social situation has a social cost, June. In a good conversation, everyone takes turns paying it. In a bad one, one or two unlucky fellows have to keep paying out the nose while everyone else has a good time for free.

Good manners, said Mr. Francis in June’s head, are about making the world a more beautiful place. Sometimes that means you have an unbeautiful thought, but you don’t say it. Sometimes it means you have an unbeautiful need, but you don’t ask for it. The moment it leaves your head, it makes the world less beautiful, do you understand? The well-mannered will go to all kinds of trouble to make sure their unbeautiful thoughts are well hidden. They train in this skill for their entire lives.

They were a powerful family, the Gilfoyles. The FBI dealt with mob cases, so Tucker was not unfamiliar with dynastic might, but the Gilfoyles' power was subtle. Indirect. They were a family of whisperers and listeners, adjacent to thrones rather than sitting in them. Kings and presidents could be ousted, after all, but the Gilfoyles could always simply fade into the background for a little while, collecting the properties dropped by fallen champions.

[Tucker} addressed an expansive middle-aged woman with equally expansive curls, the former largely hidden behind the apron of her uniform and the latter only barely hidden beneath the most insolently positioned maid's cap Tucker had ever seen. She did not sit in her chair so much as she commanded it, slouching back, arms crossed over her aproned bosom. The chair would not be leaving without her permission, that was for sure. "Toad Blankenship. Head of housekeeping." Tucker's pen, prepared for a perfunctory check mark, paused. "My records have 'Glady's Vance'". The head of housekeeping gave him a pitying look, as if he were a little slow. "Vance is my married name." "Ma'am, the Bureau needs your current legal name for its records." "Close enough to legal," she grunted. "Are you in the process of a divorce?" "Why, you looking?" He said, "Ma'am, I'm just trying to address the discrepancy." The head of housekeeping said, "Our boy Norm was killed on the Oklahoma. My husband's just signed up to fight in the Pacific to get his revenge. There was a write-up in the Charleston newspaper 'bout him. He's forty-seven. Going yonder to those yellow islands? By my reckoning, he's like to be killed too, and that'll make me Blankenship again. Might as well get used to hearing it again; that's what I told him and it's also what I'm telling you,

The two Morgan sons (who reminded June, poignantly, of Sandy) pet the dachshunds and shyly hugged June, an outlandish display of affection only possible because they had been much younger when she’d met them. This reticence was the mark of the upper class; Mr. Francis had tried to teach her. This is the language of the lower class: immediacy, possession, lust, hunger, the obvious. This is the language of the ruling class: legacy, humor, artifice, generosity, subtlety. If you want someone to treat you above your station, most of what you want must remain unspoken. To say the thing is to prove your crassness. You are not crass, June Hudson. I am not crass, Mr. Francis. You are meant for great things, June Hudson. You can say that, I can’t; them are the rules, right? Ha. Those are the rules, June.

A very great soldier would do all this, but also realize the terrible game of war was always changing, and would spend his time innovating, not simply surviving.

Hannelore smiled, less because she was amused than because she knew she was supposed to be amused.

Every interaction has a social cost, Mr. Francis had said. But what if some didn’t?

Architecturally, the hotel’s form didn’t make sense, but if one thought of it as a living entity—?

potage mongole

Do Not Disturb, by Frank Case

obvious attraction can add appeal to an unusual visage, too.

There really is nothing more valuable than a great poet and more useless than a bad one.

Everything,” he replied. “I want to be what makes you smile when we come home to each other and I want to be what makes you settle under a full moon and I want to be what makes you wild when I’m gone and I want to be what makes you laugh when I’m inside you and I want to be what makes you weep when I die and I want to be everything else in between and I want to take you out into the world and see it with you, but if it has to be here, then here

he couldn’t forget how pain and humor were so tightly aligned that, in a moment of mortal revelation, they were indistinguishable.

This was what money had done to the Gilfoyle siblings; gave them the freedom to be soft, to be carefree, to be messy. They did not need to hustle or to charm.