Twist The Knife Quotes

But I'm a selfish man. I've wanted you since you fell into my office. You are exquisite, honest, warm, strong, witty, beguilingly innocent; the list is endless. I'm in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..

2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.

I'm in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.

Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.

Having the thought of you being with someone else is like a knife twisting in my dark soul

You know how when you’re reminded of things, and you can’t shut it off quick enough?" Like, before it slips the knife in and twists? Like that.

Jon wanted nothing more. No, he had to tell himself, those days are gone. The realization twisted in his belly like a knife. They had chosen him to rule. The Wall was his, and their lives were his as well. A lord may love the men that he commands, he could hear his lord father saying, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgement on them, or send them forth to die.

Ursan flourished the knife, threatening me. "Talk, or I'll start cutting off body parts." "Yours? Or mine?" I kept my voice steady despite my insides twisting into goo. "It's an important distinction.

I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.

Oh yeah, just push the knife in further and twist, why doncha?!

I am in awe of you. I want you, the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.

I was terrified of my weakness, of my sharp tongue, of my every flaw. I was terrified that this moment, my chance to live in happiness for however short a time we may have had, would be ruined because I was simply not carved out of the same wood as happiness, and that my grain was too twisted to ever take its form.

You love your shamans like your own family, and a knife twists in your heart every time you watch one of them die. But you have to do it. You've got to make the choices no one else can. It's death or the Chuluu Korikh. Commanders cull.

Mortimer's face twisted when the Piper pressed his knife against his ribs. Oh yes, he's obviously made the wrong enemies in this story, thought Orpheus. And the wrong friends. But that was high-minded heroes for you. Stupid.

Moreover it is one of the greatest curses of religion that it takes only the very slightest twist of a knife tip in the cloth of a shirt to turn neighbours who have loved each other into bitter enemies.

That’s why life is so different to fiction. Every day is a single page and you have no chance to thumb forward and see what lies ahead.

the poem begins not where the knife enters but where the blade twists.

And I would have answered: "The knottier the branch, the more twisted and misshapen, the more bent people called it, the harder it is to find it a place among the smooth planks, the more people agree that it should be thrown on the fire, the more useless it is, the more unsuitable for anything except letting one's imagination run riot, the more I covet it, the more I yearn to weigh it in my hand, the more I long to let my whittling knife be guided by its knots and veins...Yes, bring that piece to me...

The tavern keeper, a wiry man with a sharp-nosed face, round, prominent ears and a receding hairline that combined to give him a rodentlike look, glanced at him, absentmindedly wiping a tankard with a grubby cloth. Will raised an eyebrow as he looked at it. He'd be willing to bet the cloth was transferring more dirt to the tankard then it was removing. "Drink?" the tavern keeper asked. He set the tankard down on the bar, as if in preparation for filling it with whatever the stranger might order. "Not out of that," Will said evenly, jerking a thumb at the tankard. Ratface shrugged, shoved it aside and produced another from a rack above the bar. "Suit yourself. Ale or ouisgeah?" Ousigeah, Will knew, was the strong malt spirit they distilled and drank in Hibernia. In a tavern like this, it might be more suitable for stripping runt than drinking. "I'd like coffee," he said, noticing the battered pot by the fire at one end of the bar. "I've got ale or ouisgeah. Take your pick." Ratface was becoming more peremptory. Will gestured toward the coffeepot. The tavern keeper shook his head. "None made," he said. "I'm not making a new pot just for you." "But he's drinking coffee," Will said, nodding to one side. Inevitably the tavern keeper glanced that way, to see who he was talking about. The moment his eyes left Will, an iron grip seized the front of his shirt collar, twisting it into a knot that choked him and at the same time dragged him forward, off balance, over the bar,. The stranger's eyes were suddenly very close. He no longer looked boyish. The eyes were dark brown, almost black in this dim light, and the tavern keeper read danger there. A lot of danger. He heard a soft whisper of steel, and glancing down past the fist that held him so tightly, he glimpsed the heavy, gleaming blade of the saxe knife as the stranger laid it on the bar between them. He looked around for possible help. But there was nobody else at the bar, and none of the customers at the tables had noticed what was going on. "Aach...mach co'hee," he choked. The tension on his collar eased and the stranger said softly, "What was that?" "I'll...make...coffee," he repeated, gasping for breath. The stranger smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but the tavern keep noticed that it never reached those dark eyes. "That's wonderful. I'll wait here.

One should never tell anyone anything or give information or pass on stories or make people remember beings who have never existed or trodden the earth or traversed the world or who, having done so, are now almost safe in uncertain, one-eyed oblivion. Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.

But my attention’s elsewhere, drawn to that warm wonderful pull, the familiar loving essence that only belongs to one person—only belongs to him— Watching as Damen cuts through the water, board tucked under his arm, body so sculpted, so bronzed, Rembrandt would weep. Water sluicing behind him like a hot knife through butter, cleanly, fluidly, as though parting the sea. My lips part, desperate to speak, to call out his name and bring him back to me. But just as I’m about to, my eyes meet his and I see what he sees: me—hair tangled and wet—clothes twisted and clinging—frolicking in the ocean on a hot sunny day with Jude’s tanned strong arms still wrapped around me. I release myself from Jude’s grip, but it’s too late. Damen’s already seen me. Already moved on. Leaving me hollow, breathless, as I watch him retreat. No tulips, no telepathic message, just a sad, empty void left behind in his place.

Have you seen Jules and Josh? I can’t find them anywhere.” “She’s afraid they’ve murdered each other" “You’re exaggerating.” “Not by much. I saw Jules with a knife earlier.

I felt euphorically twisted. I turned him over, so he lay on his stomach, and I drank his blood, licking and sucking where the knife protruded out of his neck. I closed my eyes, trying to get inside his mind through his blood as he died and his spirit transcended not to heaven, but to hell.

It was a punishing whim on my part, a nasty, selfish twist of the knife.

Hey, God, did I do something to piss you off? Because I'm starting to think you enjoy twisting the knife in my heart every chance you get. If too much happiness dares to encroach on my life, does some siren go off up there? Uh-oh, Gray's too happy right now. We can't have that. Time to shit all over his life again.

Between the cuts and cries you'll find a way to die. Just take a sip and twist it like a knife. A city full of sound. Too late to turn around. You need to flee the light to save your life.

Kitten.” The word was rasped so low I almost didn’t hear it above the whoosh of wind. “You have to let me die. Now, while I still have her contained!” I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t care. I pulled the knife free, flinging it aside in revulsion. Bones made a ragged noise and his face twisted, as though he were somehow in more pain without the silver in his heart than with it. “You’re not going to die,” I swore, then pressed my mouth to his for a kiss filled with all the love, pain, fear, and frustration of the past several days. I was still kissing him when I pulled out my other gun and shot him through the head.

Night fell, and her husband came to bed, and as soon as they had finished kissing and embracing each other, he fell fast asleep. Psyche was not naturally either very strong or very brave, but the cruel power of fate made a virago of her. Holding the carving knife in a murderous grip, she uncovered the lamp and let its light shine on the bed. At once the secret was revealed. There lay the gentlest and sweetest of all wild creatures, Cupid himself, the beautiful Love-god, and at sight of him the flame of the lamp spurted joyfully up and the knife turned its edge for shame. Psyche was terrified. She lost all control of her senses, and pale as death, fell trembling to her knees, where she desperately tried to hide the knife by plunging it in her own heart. She would have succeeded, too, had the knife not shrunk from the crime and twisted itself out of her hand.

James said you called yourself a nameless girl... Oh, nameless girl... When will you learn to trust me?" I turned my hand over to find the Black Knife mask. My heart tumbled and twisted. "You?" Tobiah was Black Knife?

But I’m a selfish man. I’ve wanted you since you fell into my office. You are exquisite, honest, warm, strong, witty, beguilingly innocent; the list is endless. I’m in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.

You need me because I am the Queen of Ithicana.” Twisting, she threw the knife in her hand, watching as it embedded in the map, marking Vencia—and Aren—with perfect precision. “And it’s time my father was brought to his knees.

She always fucking does that. If she knows something hits me in a deep way, if she knows it hurts, she shoves the knife in deeper and twists it around. How can a grandmother want to cause her grandchild pain? I know she’s had a hard life, I know she’s sad and desperate for attention, and I know she’s hurt by my coldness toward her, but still. I do not think there are any excuses for her behavior.

Right.” Ava closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Alex, bring me a knife.” I paled. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I held up one hand and drew Jules closer to me with the other. “I’m your only brother. You love me. Remember when I gave you the last of my Milk Duds at the movie theater? Good times.

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.

So, here I am. Awake in the dark , twisting the knife in my wounds. What a goddamn delight life really is.

Theatre, at its best, is a candle that never goes out and all of these productions, along with many more, still burn in my memory.

Moxham was strikingly beautiful, the sort of place that turns up in jigsaw puzzles or Harry Potter films.

A knife twisted in the gut of the divine as he waits and he watches and he knows that they will fall, they always fall, nothing is eternal except for the darkness.

The memories are still rattling around my head, twisting into me like a knife. I don’t want to wait around to see what comes next for me I’m this tragic story I’m living. I open up one of my father’s unused razors and cut into my wrist like he did, slit in a curve until it smiles so everyone will know I died for happiness

But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.’s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. “Like a dog!” he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.".

I felt a crack in my defenses—a weak place where truth knifed and twisted and pried for an opening

You know the trouble with this part of the world? It’s full of retired bankers and lawyers with too much time on their hands.

Oh, and since the state received a thousand dollars in federal funds for every child taken into custody, it was a nice little earner

Why would I believe someone who spends his entire life making stuff up?

The sexual tension is so thick I can cut it with a butter knife.

Well,’ I tried, ‘I suppose it’s the thought that counts.’ ‘Yes. He thought we wouldn’t notice he’s a complete cheapskate

Life just had to fuck with me by throwing the perfect girl in my life and then twisting the knife by making her only eighteen years old.

Tell anyone I said that, and I will skin you alive with a rusted knife to prolong the pain.

Confidence don't mean jack shit in the real world, sis," she once said. I feel myself finding the courage to trust those words more and more with every twist of the knife. Coincidentally, last Tuesday afternoon I was involuntarily exposed to the punch line of an old wise tale that goes something like: "There's beauty that can be found in everything." But why can't the insensitive cunt who said that ever find the courage to look in the mirror? Because poopycock, one might say.

You can call it that if you like, but what was I to do? I was desperate. I would have had to move out. I had no job, no income, nowhere to go. Philip was in the cemetery and nobody cared about me.

I can’t do this anymore, Allie. I can’t keep pretending two weeks will be enough.” His impassioned voice was barely a whisper. “The thought of you leaving tears me apart, a knife twisting into my soul.

Men got two guns, you know. One for now," he tapped the barrel of his gun against her nose. "And one for later." When his free hand went to his zipper, she twisted underneath him, bringing her knee into his groin and pulling her knife from her boot. "Mother taught me to carry a knife for always." She left him holding his intestines in disbelief as she disappeared down the hill, his gun tucked securely in her waistband.

Stalin’s policies that autumn led inexorably to famine all across the grain-growing regions of the USSR. But in November and December 1932 he twisted the knife further in Ukraine, deliberately creating a deeper crisis. Step by step, using bureaucratic language and dull legal terminology, the Soviet leadership, aided by their cowed Ukrainian counterparts, launched a famine within the famine, a disaster specifically targeted at Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Losing Lea feels like there’s a knife forever twisting in my heart. It feels like walking up a stairway that never ends, and every new step gets harder and harder to climb. It feels like floating through space with no way of getting home. It feels hopeless.

Wisteria hangs over the eaves like clumps of ghostly grapes. Euphorbia's pale blooms billow like sea froth. Blood grass twists upward, knifing the air, while underground its roots go berserk, goosing everything in their path. A magnolia, impatient with vulvic flesh, erupts in front of the living room window. The recovering terrorist--holding a watering can filled with equal parts fish fertilizer and water, paisley gloves right up over her freckled forearms, a straw hat with its big brim shading her eyes, old tennis shoes speckled with dew--moves through her front garden. Her face, she tells herself, like a Zen koan. The look of one lip smiling.

Now he was the one who was incredulous. He drew his knife from its sheath, but he was too weak to step forward, and it spilled from his hand. His sword remained useless at his side. He looked back at me in disbelief and slid to the ground, his face twisted in pain. I walked closer and stood over him, kicking his knife away. “You were wrong, Komizar. It’s much easier to kill a man than a horse.

Now I'll never see him again, and maybe it's a good thing. He walked out of my life last night for once and for all. I know with sickening certainty that it's the end. There were just those two dates we had, and the time he came over with the boys, and tonight. Yet I liked him too much - - - way too much, and I ripped him out of my heart so it wouldn't get to hurt me more than it did. Oh, he's magnetic, he's charming; you could fall into his eyes. Let's face it: his sex appeal was unbearably strong. I wanted to know him - - - the thoughts, the ideas behind the handsome, confident, wise-cracking mask. "I've changed," he told me. "You would have liked me three years ago. Now I'm a wiseguy." We sat together for a few hours on the porch, talking, and staring at nothing. Then the friction increased, centered. His nearness was electric in itself. "Can't you see," he said. "I want to kiss you." So he kissed me, hungrily, his eyes shut, his hand warm, curved burning into my stomach. "I wish I hated you," I said. "Why did you come?" "Why? I wanted your company. Alby and Pete were going to the ball game, and I couldn't see that. Warrie and Jerry were going drinking; couldn't see that either." It was past eleven; I walked to the door with him and stepped outside into the cool August night. "Come here," he said. "I'll whisper something: I like you, but not too much. I don't want to like anybody too much." Then it hit me and I just blurted, "I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them." He was definite, "Nobody knows me." So that was it; the end. "Goodbye for good, then," I said. He looked hard at me, a smile twisting his mouth, "You lucky kid; you don't know how lucky you are." I was crying quietly, my face contorted. "Stop it!" The words came like knife thrusts, and then gentleness, "In case I don't see you, have a nice time at Smith." "Have a hell of a nice life," I said. And he walked off down the path with his jaunty, independent stride. And I stood there where he left me, tremulous with love and longing, weeping in the dark. That night it was hard to get to sleep.

Stand in front of this fantastic machine, my friend, and for just 99¢ your likeness will appear, two hundred feet tall, on a screen above downtown Las Vegas. Ninety-nine cents more for a voice message. “Say whatever you want, fella. They’ll hear you, don’t worry about that. Remember you’ll be two hundred feet tall.” Jesus Christ. I could see myself lying in bed in the Mint Hotel, half-asleep and staring idly out the window, when suddenly a vicious nazi drunkard appears two hundred feet tall in the midnight sky, screaming gibberish at the world: “Woodstock Über Alles!” We will close the drapes tonight. A thing like that could send a drug person careening around the room like a ping-pong ball. Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip—the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.

Oh Kay you are like a key that opens the door of my heart. Your charm crushes me. Like a clinking machete slicing my flesh thinly cutting my heart. Let you hit my neck with the longing that you create without compassion and mercy. Kay oh Kay there's no one like you in this world. Because for you, I'm a little kid who can cry for a stuffed toy. Wherever you sing, the rhythm of the music will accompany you. And let the dance floor come to you, twisting and lifting you in a dance that makes everyone crazy. Kay oh Kay you are my sickle machete. You are the dagger that stabbed my soul, you stoned me with the sweet needle of your innocent smile. You're the sweet mouth that sighs that moans that laughs that makes my soul restless. Kay oh Kay. Your sweet spit drips like the most sugary honey on my thirsty mind. I desire you from the most sordid nests, the most abominable paths and the most perverted thoughts. I want to taste the most delicious nectar of your flowers. Oh how you taint me with your fire. You trapped me with your innocence. With your nakedness that leads me astray. How you give hope that I do not have. You won a heart I didn't fight for. Kay oh Kay you are the only answer I never questioned. A destination I never expected but greeted me with joy. You are the reality that I never dreamed of but came true by itself. How do I accept you as you accept me with all the charm of your madness. Kay oh Kay my sunshine moon. You are my river and sea. Only you my eyes are fixed, only you my heart trembles. You let me be the key that enters the darkest hole of your soul. It is not in your majesty that my dreams wander, but in your intoxicating beauty. You have imprisoned my most wretched soul. Oh Kay you are my kitchen knife, my axe, my saw, my hammer, my screwdriver. You enslaved me in this unbreakable lust. I serve you like a stupid servant. A deaf and blind goat that only serves one master. You are the master of all this passion and madness. Everything I know about you is a lie. How did you deign to allow me to love someone other than you? Kay oh Kay, if truly adoring you will give me the true meaning of a poem, then how can you give me true love that you never had?

I have a gift for you,” the dwarf said to Bran. “Do you like to ride, boy?” Maester Luwin came forward. “My lord, the child has lost the use of his legs. He cannot sit a horse.” “Nonsense,” said Lannister. “With the right horse and the right saddle, even a cripple can ride.” The word was a knife through Bran’s heart. He felt tears come unbidden to his eyes. “I’m not a cripple!” “Then I am not a dwarf,” the dwarf said with a twist of his mouth. “My father will rejoice to hear it.” Greyjoy laughed.

You grow up with somebody, and he is a success, a big-shot, and you're a failure, but he treats you just the way he always did and hasn't changed a bit. But that is what drives you to it, no matter what names you call yourself while you try to stick the knife in. There is a kind of snobbery of failure. It's a club, it's the old school, it's Skull and Bones, and there is no nasty supercilious twist to a mouth like the twist the drunk gets when he hangs over the bar beside the old pal who has turned out to be a big-shot and who hasn't changed a bit, or when the old pal takes him home to dinner and introduces him to the pretty little clear-eye woman and the healthy kids.

It seemed like he’d gone out of his way to hurt me, driving a knife into my heart and then twisting it so that there was no way I could yank it out.

His choice of books was too diverse to tell me anything: literary fiction, thrillers, classics… everything from Dan Brown to Dostoyevsky.

I never believe everything anyone says.’ ‘Including me?’ He smiled. ‘Why would I believe someone who spends his entire life making stuff up?

This morning for the first time in a long while the pleasure again in imagining a knife twisted in my heart.

It's an interesting paradox. The more humane the critics, the more hurtful their opinions.

Harriet distorted everything. It was a sort of ownership. She made the entire world her own...

think there was a part of her that was attracted to people who kill.’ ‘She admired them?

She’s gone, Dad. She was a total cow and she ruined our lives. Neither of us has to pretend any more.

It was very hard to tell when he was acting and when he wasn’t – sometimes with unfortunate consequences

Another false arrest coming so soon after the last one isn’t going to look too good on your CV, is it!

And just because I’m not standing here tearing out my hair or whatever it is you’d like me to do, it doesn’t mean I’m not deeply upset.’ He didn’t sound deeply upset.

we only lived about fifteen minutes apart, which made the emotional distance between us all the more striking.

His parents were Turkish Cypriots who had emigrated to the UK in the seventies, fleeing ethnic fighting and terrorism.

They were an audience … perhaps even a jury. My stomach was still churning. I felt like the condemned man.

Cassian's arm shook, and Nesta braced herself for the blow, showing him her forgiveness, her unending, unbreakable love for him- But Cassian roared. And then the knife twisted in his hand, angling not toward her, but toward his own heart. Of his own free will. Against the Crown's hold, against a gasping Briallyn, he chose to drive the knife into his own heart. Kill, she had said. But had not specified who. And as the sun broke over the horizon, as Cassian's knife plunged for his chest, Nesta erupted with the force of the Cauldron.

It was as if he had recognised how few pleasures he had in his life, making him all the more determined to cling on to the few that remained. Murder and cigarettes. That about summed him up.

My period continued, an inevitable cycle, yet every month I was somehow surprised by the violent pain. It was as if I refused to believe my body, something I’d trusted for years, would repeatedly betray me. My stomach ate itself from the inside, a revelry I had been dragged to, a feast I was forced to join though I was not hungry. The meal lasted four to six days, gorging on cramps, the spilled crumbs falling out of me stained with raspberry jam. My stomach was never a clean eater, gnawing on my uterus and fallopian tubes, leaving bite marks. I counted each rotation of the sun with heightening anxiety until it passed and I reset the clock. The knife carved my insides into pot roasts; the fork jabbed my sides into holey cheese. I could distinguish each fork prong—the pain was profound. My guts twisted around the spoon like spaghetti, tangled noodles slathered in scarlet marinara. Menstruation was more smashed acidic tomatoes than sweet fruit compote. I wiped my fingers on white jeans made of napkins and left streaks dried to rust. The stains came out with bleach and detergent. I died and regenerated every month. How else could I define the experience? The reasonable explanation was death. I decided when my body was wheeled into the morgue, the coroner would declare I died of being a woman. Which was far better than dying of being a man.

She had been dominating, assertive. He was softly spoken, downtrodden, with thinning hair and a face that was mournful now for good reason but which might have been the same since the day he got married.

Am I pushing or dying? the light up there, the immense round blazing white light is drinking me. It drinks me slowly, inspires me into space. If I do not close my eyes, it will drink all of me. I seep upward, in long icy threads, too light, and yet inside me there is a fire too, the nerves are twisted, there is no rest from this long tunnel dragging me, or am I pushing myself out of the tunnel, or is the child being pushed out of me, or is the light drinking me. Am I dying? The ice in the veins, the cracking of the bones, this pushing in darkness, with a small shaft of light in the eyes like the edge of the knife, the feeling of a knife cutting the flesh, the flesh somewhere is tearing as if it were burned through by a flame, somewhere my flesh is tearing and the blood is spilling out. I am pushing in the darkness, in utter darkness.

She had no human side. For the next few minutes, she said nothing, sitting at my table like some sort of malevolent Buddha, unmoving and imperious, letting me sweat it out as I wondered what was going to happen next.

I came to feel a tenderness for them all. This was something new to me. It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughened old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had used their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstuck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.Every one of them had a good knife in his pocket, sharp, the blades whetted narrow and concave, the horn of the handle worn smooth.

The Jai Mahal near the St Nicholas Market. It was quite popular, particularly among Bristol students, but the health and safety mob had been in a couple of times and they weren’t impressed at all. Our food critic called it the Die Mahal.

What struck me more than anything was the malice that ran through the review, the sense that she had enjoyed thinking up her little bons mots and spitting them in my direction. That joke about the stool, for example. Did she really have to do that?

As tight as it had been in the kitchen before they’d left, there were three times as many people crammed in there now, most of them men. Beverly’s mother was nowhere in sight and neither was the baby. Beverly was standing at the sink, a butcher’s knife in her hand. She was slicing oranges from an enormous pile that was sliding across the counter while the two lawyers from the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office, Dick Spencer and Albert Cousins—suit jackets off, ties off, and shirtsleeves rolled up high above the elbow—were twisting the halves of oranges on two metal juicers. Their foreheads were flushed and damp with sweat, their opened collars just beginning to darken, they worked as if the safety of their city relied on the making of orange juice.

Ambition, madam, is a great man’s madness,’ says Antonio in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, a play I first saw at the RSC in 1971 with Judi Dench in the title role. But it’s accepting that you will never achieve your ambition that can really drive you mad.

The doorknob twisted. “I’m coming with you.” I ran over and held it shut. “No, you are so not. We can’t carry your unconscious body around the Center. Besides, I need you here. If something goes wrong, I can’t handle you getting hurt.” “Wait, so it’s okay if I get hurt?” Jack asked. “Yes,” I snapped at the same time as Lend and Arianna. “As long as you’re sure, then,” Jack muttered. Lend jiggled the doorknob. “What about you getting hurt?” “I’ve already broken into the Faerie Realms and stabbed the Dark Queen. After that, a bunch of government suits? Not so intimidating.” “Please tell me stabbing does not factor into your strategy.” I laughed. “Of course it doesn’t. I left my knife in her neck, anyway. I think I’m just going to run around and punch people, see if I can’t find a teenage girl to tase me,” I knocked teasingly on the door.

I know Dad killed himself because of me. Mom thinks that his recent jail stint tipped him over the edge, that his many chemical imbalances caught up with him. Now I keep searching for happiness so I don’t end up like he did. I learn about this town called Happy in Texas and think about how that must be the greatest place to live. I teach myself how to say and read and write happy in Spanish, German, Italian, and even Japanese but I would have to draw that last one out. I discover the happiest animal in the world, the quokka. He’s a cheeky little bastard that’s always smiling. But it’s not enough. The memories are still rattling around my head, twisting into me like a knife. I don’t want to wait around to see what comes next for me in this tragic story I’m living. I open up one of my father’s unused razors and cut into my wrist like he did, slit in a curve until it smiles so everyone will know I died for happiness. I was expecting relief but instead it’s the saddest pain I’ve ever experienced. I never once stop feeling empty or unworthy of anyone’s rescue, not even when the thin line on my wrist makes everything go red. I

Ava, why don’t you ring this gentleman up for the Richard Argus moonlight piece?” She looked uneasy. “But—” “Now.” My smile cut across my face with the precision of a honed knife. “Careful with the tone, Fred. Ava is your best employee. You wouldn’t want to alienate her or any customers who value her opinion very highly, would you?” He blinked, his eyes darting around as his tiny brain struggled to process the not-so-subtle threat behind my words. “N-no, of course not,” Fred stuttered. “In fact, Ava, you stay right here with this gentleman. I’ll pack the piece myself.” “But she’ll get the commission.” I arched an eyebrow. “Yes.” The manager nodded so fast he resembled a bobblehead doll. “Of course.

We’ve already agreed that I can’t write about Ahmet or Pranav. So presumably I can’t write about Maureen or Sky either . . . because they’re both women! Or Lucky because he’s a dog! At the end of the day, if I listened to you, I’d only write about myself! A book full of middle-aged white writers describing middle-aged white writers being murdered by middle-aged white writers!

While he turned and twisted the strips, the thin outer bark fell off in flakes, leaving the soft, white, inside bark. The whip would have been white, except that Almanzo’s hands left a few smudges. He could not finish it before chore-time, and the next day he had to go to school. But he braided his whip every evening by the heater, till the lash was five feet long. Then Father lent him his jack-knife, and Almanzo whittled a wooden handle, and bound the lash to it with strips of moosewood bark. The whip was done. It would be a perfectly good whip until it dried brittle in the hot summer. Almanzo could crack it almost as loudly as Father cracked a blacksnake whip. And he did not finish it a minute too soon, for already he needed it to give the calves their next lesson. Now he had to teach them to turn to the left when he shouted, “Haw!” and to turn to the right when he shouted “Gee!” As soon as the whip was ready, he began. Every Saturday morning he spent in the barnyard, teaching Star and Bright. He never whipped them; he only cracked the whip.

Asked me what?” Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness, and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there’s some of that, too. Only it has too much competition to ever win out. I watch as Peeta crosses to the table, the sunlight from the window picking up the glint of fresh snow in his blond hair. He looks strong and healthy, so different from the sick, starving boy I knew in the arena, and you can barely even notice his limp now. He sets a loaf of fresh-baked bread on the table and holds out his hand to Haymitch. “Asked you to wake me without giving me pneumonia,” says Haymitch, passing over his knife. He pulls off his filthy shirt, revealing an equally soiled undershirt, and rubs himself down with the dry part. Peeta smiles and douses Haymitch’s knife in white liquor from a bottle on the floor. He wipes the blade clean on his shirttail and slices the bread. Peeta keeps all of us in fresh baked goods. I hunt. He bakes. Haymitch drinks. We have our own ways to stay busy, to keep thoughts of our time as contestants in the Hunger Games at bay. It’s not until he’s handed Haymitch the heel that he even looks at me for the first time. “Would you like a piece?” “No, I ate at the Hob,” I say. “But thank you.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own, it’s so formal. Just as it’s been every time I’ve spoken to Peeta since the cameras finished filming our happy homecoming and we returned to our real lives. “You’re welcome,” he says back stiffly. Haymitch tosses his shirt somewhere into the mess. “Brrr. You two have got a lot of warming up to do before showtime.” He’s right, of course. The audience will be expecting the pair of lovebirds who won the Hunger Games. Not two people who can barely look each other in the eye. But all I

Now, you’ve probably caught on more quickly than Painter did here. You might be thinking at this point of the old adage that says having heroes is not worth it. There are variations on it all around the cosmere. Cynical takes that encourage you never to look up to someone, lest by turning your eyes toward the sky you leave your gut open for a nice stabbing. I disagree. Hope is a grand thing, and having heroes is essential to human aspiration. That is part of why I tell these stories. That said, you do need to learn to separate the story—and what it has done to you—from the individual who prompted it. Art—and all stories are art, even the ones about real people—is about what it does to you. The true hero is the one in your mind, the representation of an ideal that makes you a better person. The individual who inspired it, well, they’re like the book on the table or the art on the wall. A vessel. A syringe full of transformational aspiration. Don’t force people to live up to your dreams of who they might be. And if you’re ever in the situation in which Painter found himself, where your ideals are crumbling, don’t do what he did. Don’t make it slow. Walk away and patch the wound instead of giving the knife time to twist inside.

Fear. Alex knew he was a fine one to pontificate about fear. He'd issued the world's most tepid, careful marriage proposal. Because he'd been afraid to tell Genevieve he loved her. Not that it would have made much of a difference. She loved Harry. Harry in his youthful innocence had put his finger right on it. And Moncrieffe pushed the realization away. He took in a sharp breath. Harry took Moncrieffe's silence as a reason to go on. "God help me, it was only because I was afraid of losing her. And I honestly didn't feel I deserved her, for I had nothing to give her. I simply needed to know whether she loved me. I'm not proud of it, but I have never loved anyone more." Moncrieffe could still scarcely get the words out. "I just can't believe you would 'do' such a thing to someone you... loved." Osborne was very, very drunk, but he wasn't stupid. "But I couldn't hurt her, could I, if she didn't love me?" And now Harry's blue eyes fixed on him almost searchingly. Moncrieffe couldn't believe he had almost shown his hand. "You just said you weren't certain whether she did love you. And if she does love you anywhere as much as you claim to love her, imagine the pain you may have caused her with your whole charade." Harry looked up at him and blinked. And as he thought about it, his face slowly went white. After a moment he swallowed. "'Gallant' of you," Moncrieffe drawled, twisting the knife. Moncrieffe knew a surge of hatred for himself for saying it. But he wanted Harry to feel what he'd done to Genevieve.

A brittle laugh left his lips. “That’s exactly why I can’t be late. See you later, guys.” He strode toward the door briskly, hoping Ryan would leave it alone. But of course he didn’t. Ryan caught up with him outside before James could reach his car. “Jamie!” Suppressing a sigh, James put on a neutral face and turned to Ryan. “I’m really running late—” “Listen to me, you git,” Ryan said, his eyes dark and hard. “I’m not sure what’s going on in that head of yours lately, but don’t do anything stupid, okay? Don’t agree to Arthur ’s plans only because you think you have to.” Ryan lifted his hands to cradle James’s face. Jamie went still, his heart hammering as Ryan looked him in the eye intently. “You deserve better. You deserve marrying someone you’re crazy about. Someone who would love you for being you—not for your money or your family name, but because you’re the best person I know.” Ryan smiled at him crookedly. “Being in love is pretty fucking great, actually. You deserve to find your Hannah.” Jamie wondered if it would actually hurt more if Ryan stuck a knife in his gut and twisted it slowly. He thought he smiled. He hoped he was smiling. His face hurt, so he must be. He said, “Sure I will. Later, mate.” He was surprised by how absolutely normal his voice sounded. He smiled again and turned away. He walked to his car. He got in. He closed the door. He put his hands on the steering wheel. His throat worked as he tried to swallow the painful lump in his throat. He couldn’t. A terrible, choked sound came from his throat. His chest began to heave. He pressed his hands to his eyes and breathed in, breathed out.

Because of this place I’m a murderer,” he said. “Complicity,” he amended after a moment’s consideration. “Soon to be.” The last was a conclusive mutter. “Get to the funny part,” Libby suggested dryly. “Well, there’s a stain on me now, isn’t there? A mark. Would kill for…followed by a blank space.” Nico summoned the knife back to his palm, only of course it didn’t register that way. One moment the knife was cast aside, the next it was in his hand. “I wouldn’t have that if I hadn’t come here. And I wouldn’t have come here at all if it weren’t for you.” She wondered if he blamed her. He didn’t sound accusatory, but it was hard not to assume that he was. “You were going to do it regardless, remember?” “Yeah but only because they asked you.” He glanced down at the knife in his hand, turning it over to inspect the blade. “Inseverable,” he said, neither to himself nor her. “What?” “Inseverable,” he repeated, louder this time. He glanced at her, shrugging. “One of those if-then calculations, right? We met, so now we can’t detach. We’re just going to always play a weird game of…what’s the word? The thing, espejo, the game. The mirror game.” “Mirror game?” “Yeah, you do one thing, I do it too. Mirror.” Libby asked, “But who does it first?” “Doesn’t matter.” “Do you resent it?” He looked down at the knife, and then back up at her. “Apparently, I’d kill to protect it,” he said, “so yeah.” “We could stop,” she suggested. “Stop playing the game.” “Stop where? Stop here? No,” Nico said with a shake of his head, fingers tapping at his side. “This isn’t far enough.” “But what if it’s too far?” “It is,” he agreed. “Too far to stop.” “Paradox,” Libby observed aloud, and Nico’s mouth twisted with wry acknowledgement. “Isn’t it? The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.

Have you somewhere else to be, George?” “Hmm?” His friend snapped to attention and grinned. “Anywhere but here. No offense intended, old man, but I tire of watching you glower at them. If you don’t intend to relinquish Lady Oh to Fairchild, why did you invite him?” “Because he looked so woebegone when I had coffee with him the other day. Mrs. Hampton has not let her granddaughter see anyone but my family these weeks, and apparently the colonel felt her withdrawal acutely.” Ben, on the other hand, had been allowed to watch her bruise change color under the rouge. Each shade proved a twist to the knife in his gut. Yes, it would be better for all if Fairchild were given the chance to declare himself. George clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Well, cheer up, my friend. If his expression is any indication, he may propose tonight, and then you will no longer be plagued by indecisiveness, what with him removing all decision from your hands.” “Indeed.” Blast it.

He finds a basket and lays fish inside it. Charcoal is in a wooden bucket. Enrique lifts it, basket in his other hand, and moves through shadow toward daylight. A presence makes him turn his head. He sees no one, yet someone is there. He sets down fish and charcoal. Straightening up, Enrique slips his Bowie knife clear of its sheath. He listens, tries to sense the man’s place. This intruder lies low. Is concealed. Behind those barrels? In that corner, crouched down? Enrique shuts his eyes, holds his breath a moment and exhales, his breath’s movement the only sound, trying to feel on his skin some heat from another body. Where? Enrique sends his mind among barrels and sacks, under shelves, behind posts and dangling utensils. It finds no one. He is hiding. Wants not to be found. Is afraid. If he lies under a tarpaulin, he cannot see. To shoot blind would be foolish: likely to miss, certain to alert the others. Enrique steps around barrels, his boots silent on packed sand. Tarps lie parallel in ten-foot lengths, their wheaten hue making them visible in the shadowed space. They are dry and hold dust. All but one lies flat. There. Enrique imagines how it will be. To strike through the tarp risks confusion. Its heavy canvas can deflect his blade. But his opponent will have difficulty using his weapon. He might fire point-blank into Enrique’s weight above him, bearing down. To pull the tarpaulin clear is to lose his advantage; he will see the intruder who will see him. An El Norte mercenary with automatic rifle or handheld laser can cut a man in half. Knife in his teeth, its ivory handle smooth against lips and tongue, Enrique crouches low. Pushing hard with his legs, he dives onto the hidden shape. The man spins free as Enrique grasps, boots slipping on waxed canvas. His opponent feels slight, yet wiry strength defeats Enrique’s hold. He takes his knife in hand and rips a slit long enough to plunge an arm into his adversary’s shrouded panic. Enrique thrusts the blade’s point where he believes a throat must be. Two strong hands clamp his arm and twist against each other rapidly and hard. Pain flares across his skin. Enrique wrests his arm free and his knife flies from his grasp and disappears behind him. He clenches-up and, pivoting on his other hand, turns hard into a blind punch that smashes the hidden face. The dust of their struggle rasps in Enrique’s throat. His intended killer sucks in a hard breath and Enrique hits him again, then again, each time turning his shoulder into the blow. The man coughs out, “Do not kill me.” Enrique knows this voice. It is Omar the Turk. [pp. 60-61]

Oh, but to get through this night. Why won’t sleep come? What’s bothering me here in the dark? It’s not the badgers, it’s not the snakes. What’s bothering me? Something darker is worrying a hole inside me—look how my legs are trembling. Stop moving, Tatiana. That’s how the carnivores find you, by the flash of life on your body, they find you and eat you while you sleep. Like venomous spiders, they’ll bite you first to lull you into sleep—you won’t even feel it—and then they will gnaw your flesh until nothing remains. But even the animals eating her alive was not the thing that worried the sick hole in Tatiana’s stomach as she lay in the leaves with her face hidden from the forest, with her arms over her head, in case anything decided to fall on her. She should’ve made herself a shelter but it got dark so fast, and she was so sure she would find the lake, she hadn’t been thinking of making herself more comfortable in the woods. She kept walking and walking, and then was downed and breathless and unprepared for pitch black night. To quell the terror inside her, to not hear her own voices, Tatiana whimpered. Lay and cried, low and afraid. What was tormenting her from the inside out? Was it worry over Marina? No... not quite. But close. Something about Marina. Something about Saika... Saika. The girl who caused trouble between Dasha and her dentist boyfriend, the girl who pushed her bike into Tatiana’s bike to make her fall under the tires of a downward truck rushing headlong... the girl who saw Tatiana’s grandmother carrying a sack of sugar and told her mother who told her father who told the Luga Soviet that Vasily Metanov harbored sugar he had no intention of giving up? The girl who did something so unspeakable with her own brother she was nearly killed by her own father’s hand—and she herself had said the boy got worse—and this previously unmentioned brother was, after all, dead. The girl who stood unafraid under rowan trees and sat under a gaggle of crows and did not feel black omens, the girl who told Tatiana her wicked stories, tempted Tatiana with her body, turned away from Marina as Marina was drowning...who turned Marina against Tatiana, the girl who didn’t believe in demons, who thought everything was all good in the universe, could she . . . What if...? What if this was not an accident? Moaning loudly, Tatiana turned away to the other side as if she’d just had a nightmare. But she hadn’t been dreaming. Saika took her compass and her knife. But Marina took her watch. And there it was. That was the thing eating up Tatiana from the inside out. Could Marina have been in on something like this? Twisting from side to side did not assuage her torn stomach, did not mollify her sunken heart. Making anguished noises, her eyes closed, she couldn’t think of fields, or Luga, or swimming, or clover or warm milk, anything. All good thoughts were drowned in the impossible sorrow. Could Marina have betrayed her?