Delilah S. Dawson Quotes & Sayings

Easy things aren't worth much. Your hand in mine is worth a great deal, Leticia." he said, helping to my feet. "That's what I'll be fighting for tomorrow. — Delilah S. Dawson

My dear artificer, I find I like it better from the front. — Delilah S. Dawson

Good news arrives with TV cameras and big, brightly painted vans. Bad news arrives quietly, in dark sedans with black windows. — Delilah S. Dawson

Unicorns aren't magical and beautiful. They're just predatory horses that have horns and love to eat virgins. — Delilah S. Dawson

Time to beat back the bunny hordes," he said gallantly,knowing that any blood-hungry animals in the area would be waiting outside for me.
He threw open the door, shouting, "Bunnies, prepare to meet your doom! — Delilah S. Dawson

It's not my fault I have vampire swagger. — Delilah S. Dawson

What you're seeing is pain. And you're the only one who sees it," he said more softly. "You're the only one who can cut me, and you wound me deep. — Delilah S. Dawson

You're here," he said simply.
"Do I know you?" I asked, which came out more haughtily than I had intended.
"You will," he answered, kicking off the tree and walking toward me. "After all, you're wearing my locket. And I've been waiting for you. — Delilah S. Dawson

. . . dreams are your heart's playground. — Delilah S. Dawson

No people. You get close to them, and they die or disappear. You kiss them, just for fun, and they tie you to the bed and steal your creds. They're messy. Stupid. Foolish. — Delilah S. Dawson

I need you, not it. And I'm done being used. If you're going to take from me, you're going to start giving back, and I'll start with your heart. — Delilah S. Dawson

Oh, well, you go to poor school." He gives a comic eye roll. "At rich school, we take notes on hundred-dollar bills using unicorn tears, and our grief is vastly different and more complex. — Delilah S. Dawson

He was an animal. He was terrifying. And he was beautiful. I realized that I was biting my lip, that my hand was wound into the ruffled fabric at my chest. Something in me was drawn to the carnage. Like so many women before me, I was a slave to the caveman brain, that deep old part of my DNA that whispered that ferocity would keep me safe and fed and alive and that I should most definitely find the fiercest creature around and hump it. — Delilah S. Dawson

Wait," I said looking around. "How do we get off of this thing and onto the island?"
Criminy's mouth compressed into a thin line. Then his lips started to twitch. Then he started to shake. And then he cackled, head thrown back, as if it was the funniest joke he'd ever heard.
"Darling, I have no idea whatsoever," he said, "I didn't think that far ahead. — Delilah S. Dawson

The word WANTED slithered across the top of each image in elegant calligraphy. The drawing of Criminy was spot-on, but the one of me was more than a little imaginative. I looked like an evil seductress, some sort of vampy witch-queen.
I liked it.
I wanted a copy for my wagon. — Delilah S. Dawson

I told him my own story, from locket to fainting. But I left out the part about how I was supposed to be Criminy's magic mail-order bride. — Delilah S. Dawson

Like so many women before me, I was a slave to the caveman brain, that deep old part of my DNA that whispered that ferocity would keep me safe and fed and alive and that I should most definitely find the fiercest creature around and hump it.
Dawson, Delilah S. (2012-03-27). Wicked as They Come (Blud) (p. 309). Pocket Books. Kindle Edition. — Delilah S. Dawson

He was watching me, and he chuckled.
"Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me.
"No," I said.
"You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere."
"Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked.
"Are you calling me a man?" he said. — Delilah S. Dawson

I needed to take control of the dream. I held out a hand with fingers splayed and focused my will. "Zzzzzzzsssst! Pshew! Zzzzist!" I said. But nothing happened.
"What in Sang are you doing, love?" he asked.
My arm dropped to my side. "I was trying to shoot lightning bolts out of my fingertips," I said. Then, quietly, "It usually works."
"Told you it wasn't a dream. Do you want to try flying, too?"
Sheepishly, I gave a little hop, but my feet came back down to the ground.
"No," I said, feeling sullen and embarrassed and on the verge of outright panic. — Delilah S. Dawson

I'm a nurse," I said, feeling huffy. "I help sick people."
"So you can stop the diseases?" he asked.
"Not really. I mostly help the people who are already dying, trying to make their last days comfortable."
"You help people die," he mused. "That sounds quite sinister, and that's coming from someone who drinks blood. — Delilah S. Dawson

He was gazing down at me, and his eyes were endless, deep pools of pleading and fire and barely restrained something or other, and they were magnetic, like black holes, but full of flames, and yet gray, and yet full of colors and see-through and dancing with little flecks of glitter, and I couldn't look away, and what pretty eyelashes he had, as long and dark as a woman's, as a kitten's, as a panther's, and the smell, oh, the smell, like crushed heather and berries and springtime in the morning and bodies rolling over and over in the grass and everything covered with dew like cobwebs making mandalas of raindrops, and I couldn't stand it, couldn't hold back for one more second ... — Delilah S. Dawson

The last nice young man I'd met had nearly broken me. I wasn't ready to be tied down again. And I wasn't ready to share what was left of myself yet, either. — Delilah S. Dawson

In the dark of the night, we're nothing but shadows. My feelings and thoughts are as tangled as unraveled yarn, loose ends and knots and bursts of violent color. — Delilah S. Dawson

Do you really want to know what it's like, being a spy? Never sure to whom you're giving your allegiance, and knowing that most of your colleagues will die gruesomely, often by your hand? Fine. Let me show you. — Delilah S. Dawson

People were people, and they'd double-cross you or die on you no matter where they were from. — Delilah S. Dawson

Walking across the moors made me feel as if I'd stepped primly out of a Jane Austen book or an Impressionist painting. But I bet even Elizabeth Bennet had never punted a rabbit before, and my current count was 137. — Delilah S. Dawson

He sighed. Look, love, I know I seem like a tactical genius, but really, I'm just a magician who occasionally kills a bunny or drives a train. — Delilah S. Dawson

Honestly," he said with a grin, "how would that have worked? Oh, hello dream lover. Would you drink some of my blud so I won't murder you in front of all these nice people?" — Delilah S. Dawson

I am surely miserable, and misery is a rainstorm. But this moment is an umbrella, a singular thing, a contained thing, a stolen thing, a world infinite in itself. — Delilah S. Dawson

The night was young, and Bazine Netal was hunting. — Delilah S. Dawson

Are you saying that was real magic?" I said. "That's crazy."
"Well, let's see. Are you telling me you just saw the past in a vision. That a monkey in a top hat was trying to murder my chief costumer and head accountant with the most powerful poison in existence using her makeup jar? If so, perhaps I'm not the crazy one here. — Delilah S. Dawson

I watched him playing with the long blades of grass, weaving them into patterns as he hummed an unfamiliar song, a waltz.
"What are you doing?" I asked him.
"I'm letting you get used to the idea of me," he said idly. "I'm pretending to be harmless. Is it working?"
"Until you smile," ( ... ) — Delilah S. Dawson

I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you are," I said shyly. "I just don't want to mess up, and you're much better at this sort of thing than I am."
"Don't worry. You'll enjoy playing along. You'll have to be haughty, and I'll have to act beaten down, when we're in public."
"That sounds kind of fun." I said.
"Just don't forget that it's a ruse, love," he said. "Because once we're outside the walls again, you'll be entirely in my power. And I'd hate to have to spank you. — Delilah S. Dawson

I'm a gypsy. A rogue. Wicked as they come. — Delilah S. Dawson

Let me guess. You think we're going to live happily ever after, like some stupid fairy tale?"
"Why not?" His stare dared me to laugh or, worse, to argue.
"Because the whole thing is ridiculous," I said. I despised the bitterness in my own voice. I sounded so damaged. Good. If he thought I was his soul mate for some mysterious reason he wouldn't let on, let him see the worst of me.
"It's not ridiculous to me. Perhaps that's the difference between predators and prey, love. I'll never stop hunting. But I expect that one day, you'll stop running."
"Because I want to die?"
"Because you want to live. — Delilah S. Dawson

Why, Criminy Stain," I said. "You're a romantic."
"Oh, no," he said with a grin. "I'm fiendish and unscrupulous, a vicious killer and a thief and a bloodthirsty monster. And maybe a little romantic. But don't tell anyone, or my reputation's shot. — Delilah S. Dawson

What if you could take everything you were looking for in a person and whisper it into someone's ear, and they brought that person to you? And then, when you saw them for the first time, even if you didn't know they were the one for you, you suddenly knew it anyway?"
His finger traced my eyebrows, my cheekbones, as he thought a moment.
"What if your heart stopped when you saw that person, and only after that did you realize that they truly were everything you ever wanted? — Delilah S. Dawson

Dammit, woman! You're scent, your stupid bloody delicious scent lingering in every crevice of my body and my wardrobe, driving me nearly mad. Do you know what it's like to want something so badly, to have it so close, and still feel that it's out of your reach? Out of control? — Delilah S. Dawson

I miss the days when I could wake up from a nightmare and call out, and someone would hold me close, make me feel warm and safe. — Delilah S. Dawson

And watch out for flying monkeys, you old bitch! — Delilah S. Dawson

You can come back here." I sniff. "I think I got it all out."
"You needed a good cry worse than anyone on earth," he says. "But, for the record, I wasn't listening, and you didn't make any weird snerk noises."
I laugh, but it comes out as another weird snerk noise. — Delilah S. Dawson

I don't know," I said, exasperated. "What else do you have in your wacked-out world? Heat sensors? Mine fields? Dirigibles? Booby traps? Machine guns? Shrink rays? What?"
"Aside from dirigibles, which are rather expensive and rare outside of trade routes, most of what you just said made no sense whatsoever," he said, as delighted as a child hearing a foreign language for the first time. "But it all sounds very dangerous. And fun. Especially the part about the boobies. — Delilah S. Dawson

Somewhere, deep behind my ribs, in a place I didn't know existed, my heart opens up like one of those blooming tea bags, the ones that start out tiny and dark and then blossom like a flower. I've never let someone kiss me before. I've never let myself want to let it happen. It's as unreal as everything else but far more welcome. — Delilah S. Dawson

But I'm knitting for anarchy. — Delilah S. Dawson

If I'd known it would be that good, I might not have resisted for so long. — Delilah S. Dawson

He leaned over my back, his lips warm against my ear. You may be a princess, but you belong to me. — Delilah S. Dawson

Sweetheart, you couldn't conjure me if you tried. — Delilah S. Dawson

So on the way out, maybe I sashayed a little. Maybe I tried swinging my hips. Maybe I didn't. It's not a crime to feel pretty, after all. — Delilah S. Dawson

It's a little scary, what you do."
As I tried to figure out how to respond, and with words as sharp and cold as the blade of a knife, Criminy said, "If you're scared of her talent, then you don't truly know what fear is. — Delilah S. Dawson

Criminy?" I asked.
"Hmm?"
"What are we doing?"
"I'm having a meal with a friend while you squirm like a child," he said serenely. — Delilah S. Dawson

By the time she'd run to the edge of the crater, Bazine's mentor and once-friend was climbing over the edge, bruised and scratched up but mostly unharmed. — Delilah S. Dawson

I would burn down the world for you," he whispered fiercely. "Your world or my own. I would rip down the entire city with my bare hands without a second thought. I don't need to taste anything else, I don't need a comparison. — Delilah S. Dawson