Цитаты из книг — J. A. Rock

"Violence starts as a discovery -- of power, of ambition. Of a force that rests with its head against your heart." I had, I hoped, chosen kindness over violence. Most of the time.

We think we know beauty when we see it. In a woman`s face, in the curves of her body. In the sun sinking beyond the ocean or the flowers that pry themselves out of the softening ground each spring. But real beauty is a mystery. The ninnows that dart away just before you glance into the shallows. The lightning that flashes…

Our story is very simple. A girl who was scared loved one who was brave. A girl fool enough to try to play hero saw the underlying hornlessness of monsters. And in a sweet shock of ruin, two women found forgiveness, and they held each other in the wreckage left by one for whom forgiveness meant nothing. That is a tale…

I am still not sure what we are. We have never untangled or tried to match our ideas about love, fidelity, and gratitude. I don`t know if I am something she treasures or if I am simply a shelf above loneliness, where she sits and looks down at a void that dares her, coaxes her to lean forward. But I know she keeps me from…

I have indeed made a sacrifice, it seems. I sacrificed my chance to be human, complicated, weak and lovely both. I have seen so many people overlook what I was -- an orphan, a crook, a tough in love with her own fists -- in favor of the image of me as a warrior. The girl who set out to slay the Minotaur and succeeded. I…

"I`m sorry," she whispered. "Thera. I`m so sorry." "Me too." I pushed a curl back from her face." As if love is ever a matter of forgiveness. We disappear in love. We hunger, regret, and resurface. Guild and shame are how we decorate love when we are afraid to look at it directly. The core is something simpler. Bright,…

When you fall in love with someone, you fall in love not only with her face and eyes and heart, but with her vision of the world. Love leaves no room to stand back and pity another`s delusions. You share them. You join hands lying down and draw an arc across the sky and tell a story about what a cloud looks like, a story…

Each day during lessons and chores, I told myself this would be the night I placed my hand somewhere other than her shoulder. The night I would have the courage to hold her, to touch her. And yet each night, one of us drew away in the middle of a kiss, and we both lay on our backs, staring at the ceiling. I began to…

I comforted her mainly for Alle`s sake, so that Alle would see me doing something kind. But something about holding Franny moved me deeply. I can only think that there are moments when I pity the child I was. More often I hate her, but pity sometimes swims in the same river. And maybe on that day, with Franny quivering…

When she offered me the pill cup, I touched her hand -- deliberately, but with such casual clumsiness that she might think it was an accident. Something flared in her eyes, a desolate longing blunted by weariness. Some old demon of hers had been snagged from the sea, cranked up, and dangled before her. Now I credit myself…

I wanted her to be my sister. I had a storybook understanding of sisters. They whispered secrets and held your hand, and you dug in the dirt together and went exploring. They had ribbons in their hair, and they were usually in some way tragic. Too shy and gentle to withstand the brute world`s lashing, they coaxed fawns…

This is how things are, Thera. If you try to change them, you may fail. But that doesn`t mean you shouldn`t try.

She seduced me, but she did not delude me. She manipulated, but I could have followed the thread back to the truth anytime. I wanted to be under her spell.

At Rock Point, many of the girls liked stories that ended happily, or at least offered a sense of closure. But I liked tales with abstruse people screwing and killing their way toward ambiguous outcomes. I liked shadows. And I liked gore. And secretly, I liked redemption. I liked monsters who regretted and heroes who…