NOVELSNET.

People are naive about such things, and they would rather write them off as evil than attempt to understand them. An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless. x, x, x.

@booksociety​‘s villains and antiheroes event: renegades by marissa meyer        ↳ ❝ We were all villains in the beginning. ❞

“The clan is my blood and the Pillar is its master,” she whispered. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but those oaths aren’t one of them.”

but when your entire world is shattering, a little bit of magic is...n o t h i n g.

these words people threw around—humans, monsters, heroes, villains—to victor it was all just a matter of semantics.

i let my gaze draw the lines here, too, from building to building, from tree to tree, from buried lives to beaten ones. from blood stolen to blood hidden. i map this terrain’s sins, the invisible, and the many, and hold them close. because even if the pain of those sins takes my breath away, the pain feels like belonging. and ignoring it, after all i’ve just witnessed, would be loss.

“don’t leave,” he whispered, and his hand flailed, reaching for her. “you and I … we need to stay together. we’re better this way.”

and everything about this moment is so lovely and so fragile in its loveliness that i'm almost afraid to hold it

for @henwilsons, the other half of my soul.

you think, as you walk away from le cirque des rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus. you are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.

"he doesn't trust me," i whisper. "he trusts you. he doesn't trust that what you have won't be taken away from him." he shakes his head. "if this is worth it to you, noelle, then be patient with our boy. it takes him three times as long to admit to his own happiness because he never knew he was allowed to have it."

do you have a death wish, mademoiselle? or is it the dead themselves who call to you?

because beneath my apprehension is the stronger, deeply ingrained need to be liked. to be accepted. to be forgiven. to be recognized as good. i'll do anything to redeem myself.

she’d shown him more loyalty and tenderness in two days than he’d ever felt in his life, and he knew then, with a force that drove the air from his lungs, that he would never survive her.

they watch us kneel, they see the back of our heads, and they think we've given in. they don't realize you can think from your knees just as well as from your feet.

"What you hold onto is less important than the act of holding on itself. It's so easy to get lost in ourselves and this world. Sometimes you need to find your way back one tiny miracle at a time." "I don't believe in miracles," Jean said. "I have enough faith for us both," Renee promised. "I know one will find you sooner or later."