LEITH BAYARD

❛ Don’t feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy. ❜

❛ Pity those who don’t feel anything at all. ❜

❛ Be glad of your human heart ❜

❛ I love you, thorns and all ❜

❛ You look … better than before. ❜

❛ We need hope, or else we cannot endure. ❜

❛ I love you ❜

❛ Do you ever stop being so serious and dull? ❜

❛ Do you ever stop being such a prick? ❜

❛ Well, good-bye for now ❜

❛ I might die of surprise ❜

❛ What do you want? ❜

❛ Why are you telling me this? ❜

❛ I’m tired and lonely, and you’re the only person I can talk to without putting myself at risk. ❜

❛ You can leave if you’re just going to insult me. ❜

❛ One wrong move tomorrow, and we’re all doomed. ❜

❛ I didn’t want you to fight alone. Or die alone. ❜

❛ You didn’t tell me this would happen. ❜

❛ You didn’t ask. So how am I to blame? ❜

❛ Because your human joy fascinates me—the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all at once, is … entrancing. ❜

❛ I’m drawn to it, even when I know I shouldn’t be, even when I try not to be. ❜

❛ Because I wouldn’t want to die alone ❜

❛ Because I’d want someone to hold my hand until the end, and a while after that. ❜

❛ Don’t pretend you care. ❜

❛ My priority would be to protect my family – and I would have picked whatever side could keep them safest. ❜

❛ I hadn’t thought of it as a weakness until now. ❜

❛ Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me. ❜

❛ Make it go away ❜

❛ We’re too powerful, and too bored with immortality, to be checked by anything else. ❜

❛ Better to die with my chin held high than groveling like a cowering worm. ❜

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

You are going to break your promise. I understand.

You’re lonely too.

It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be.

I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable.

I am your servant.

I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased.

For you alone I will be weak.

I belong here, and you will not deny me.

I say these things, and the world listens.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried.

In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories.

I moved the earth and the water for you.

You will always run away with her.

You will always lose her.

You will always be a fool.

You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear.

You have already done all of this and will do it again.

No one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying.

What we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

There need never be any rules between us.

Let us be greedy together; let us hoard.

Do not leave me, swear that you will never leave me.

I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.

Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.

I can’t abide a poor liar.

You look like a winter’s night. I could sleep inside the cold of you.

Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.

Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.

In his own country, Death can be kind.

What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

Men die. It’s practically what they’re for.

I am no one; I am nothing.

Nothing in me was not made by you.

A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.

Just tell yourself a story that’ll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

Forever isn’t bright; it isn’t like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.

I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.

If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.

What did I do wrong? Was I boring? Did I ignore you?

Don’t you dare speak to me like that.

I have worn nothing but blood and death for years.

I have fought all your battles for you, just as you asked me.

I have learned not to cry when I strangle a man.

I have learned to watch everything die.

I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too.

Are we not devils?

No one is now what they were before the war.

I have not seen you without your skin on.

Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.

We obsess. It’s in our nature.

I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.

In war you must always choose sides.

If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.

We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive.

My old bones will follow yours soon enough.

It is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair.

I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.

After love, no one is what they were before.

I have survived, but I have not been spared.

In the space of one heartbeat to another I loved you and I was lost to you.

Frighten me, make me cry, only come back.

It’s not so bad, my darling. Being dead. It’s like being alive, only colder.

You’ll think it’s love, while he dines on your heart.

You will be so beautiful when you are old.

I cannot keep you and I cannot let you go.

You will live as you live in any world…with difficulty, and grief.

I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.

She said you’d come and I swore to eat your heart.

I still want to kiss you.

My heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it.

What happens to anything beautiful?

“don’t you dare.”

“look at me.”

“just forget it.”

“i’m not mad.”

“you’re being mean.”

“what a mess.”

“you are perfect.”

“jesus fucking christ.”

“you’ll be okay.”

“take a seat.”

“don’t let go.”

“oh my god.”

“you’re the worst.”

“you’re my favorite.”

“i ruined everything.”

“you ruined everything.”

“just trust me.”

“i’m not drunk.”

“i feel lost.”

“i’m so alone.”

“you’re not alone.”

“hold onto me.”

“just come here.”

“stay the night.”

“please just go.”