Karen Marie Moning Quotes & Sayings

But he didn't need to seek visual confirmation of what he'd just heard to know she had. And the truth was, he couldn't blame her. He'd not have let her die, either. He'd have moved mountains. He'd have battled God or Devil for his wife's life.
She'd betrayed him.
He smiled faintly. — Karen Marie Moning

Fuck, I think. Just that. A multitude of various fucks all in one great big clusterfuck. As in: I am fucked if I want this ... this ... newborn imbecile. And she is so fucked if I take her. And fuck if I'm going to walk away. — Karen Marie Moning

Now you know how I justify my addictions - if I can pay less for it than I would at Wal-Mart, I get to have it. — Karen Marie Moning

How will we get back up?" I worried. "I have a different route in mind for our return trip." "Does it involve stairs?" I asked hopefully. "No." "Of course not. How silly of me. And for our return adventure we will be scaling the side of Mount Everest, hiking boots to be provided by our trusty sponsor, Barrons Books and Baubles. — Karen Marie Moning

I'm sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody's does, and you go on. It's how you go on that defines you. — Karen Marie Moning

I'm not helping you, Ms. Lane. I'm entertaining the notion that you might be of use to me. If so, I need you alive. — Karen Marie Moning

What is the greater good but tyranny's chameleon? — Karen Marie Moning

Question: When you're one of the few people who can do something to fix a problem, just how responsible does that make you for it? Answer: It's how you choose to answer that question that defines you. — Karen Marie Moning

Make no mistake, Ms. Lane, I didn't rape you. You can lie there on your pretty little
P.C. ass and claim with your idealistic little P.C. arguments that any violation of your will
is rape and that I'm a big, bad bastard, and I'll tell you that you're full of shit, and you've
obviously never been raped. Rape is much, much worse. Rape isn't something you walk
away from. You crawl. — Karen Marie Moning

He wasn't handsome. That was too calm a word. He was intensely masculine. He was sexual. He attracted. — Karen Marie Moning

You're early."
I give him a mutinous look. Of course he thinks my being early is about him. It's not. Mac was at Chester's last night at eight. I think she's hunting me. Since I can't be late to avoid her, I have to be early. "Watch broke. Thought I was on time."
"You don't wear a watch."
"See? I knew I had a problem. I'll just dash out and get one. Be back tomorrow. On time. — Karen Marie Moning

And if that hadn't been enough, the castle cat, obviously female and obviously in heat, had sashayed in, tail straight up and perkily curved at the tip, and wound her furry little self sinuously around Adam's ankles, purring herself into a state of drooling, slanty-eyed bliss. Mr. Black, my ass, she'd wanted to snap (and she liked cats, really she did; she'd certainly never wanted to kick one before, but please - even cats?), he's a fairy and I found him, so that makes him my fairy. Back off.
-Gabby's thought on Adam — Karen Marie Moning

You don't know me inside and out. You may have gotten in my skin, but you have never gotten inside my heart. Go ahead, Barrons, make me slice and dice myself. Go ahead, play games with me. Push me around. Lie to me. Bully me. Be your usual constant jackass self. Stalk around all broody and pissy and secretive, but you're wrong about me. There's something inside me you'd better be afraid of. And you can't touch my soul. You will never touch my soul! — Karen Marie Moning

Anyone worth knowing breaks once. — Karen Marie Moning

Gwen smiled. "Hardly. Bedraggled is being in the full throes of nicotine withdrawal, and after a week on a bus with a group of senior citizens, falling into a cave, and landing on a body."
"And then getting tossed back a few centuries, with no idea of what's going on," Chloe agreed. "Naked, too, weren't you?"
Gwen nodded wryly.
Gabby blinked.
"I gave you my plaid," Drustan protested indignantly. — Karen Marie Moning

We will K'Vruck the world. — Karen Marie Moning

Lies are horny little buggers, they breed like rabbits and bound around just as insanely and then you have to try to keep track of them. — Karen Marie Moning

We fucked, Ms. Lane. Even cockroaches fuck. They eat each other, too. — Karen Marie Moning

For fuck's sake, you vanished and I couldn't find you. Do you really think I'm going to let that happen again? If you believe nothing else, concede it will work for that reason alone. I don't lose things that are mine. — Karen Marie Moning

I have your word?"
"You trust my word?"
"You're an idealistic fool. Of course. — Karen Marie Moning

When my faith is getting weak
And I feel like giving in
You breathe into me again ... — Karen Marie Moning

Sometimes the small pleasures in life are the sweetest. — Karen Marie Moning

The real thinkers of the world aren't the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that- ask yourself what they're running from. — Karen Marie Moning

You could ask me to teach you."
"Huh?" This night is getting weird in a hurry. "Teach me like you're teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: 'You Too Can Be a Sociopath 101'?"
"It would be more like a graduate-level class."
I start to snicker. His sense of humour sneaks up on you. Then I remember who's talking and bite it off. — Karen Marie Moning

I stepped inside and stopped, blinking in astonishment. From the exterior I'd expected a charming little book and curio shop with the inner dimensions of a university Starbucks. What I got was a cavernous interior that housed a display of books that made the library Disney's Beast gave to Beauty on their wedding day look understocked. — Karen Marie Moning

He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared. — Karen Marie Moning

Born in a generation that thinks cynical and disenchanted is cool,
sometimes I'm a little off the beaten track. — Karen Marie Moning

I kept it to remind me that although there is evil, there is sometimes beauty and light. You, Jillian. You were always my light. — Karen Marie Moning

It's unnecessary to understand how an animal became rabid to put it down, — Karen Marie Moning

Yesterday was a memory. Tomorrow was a hope. Today was another day to live and do one's best to love — Karen Marie Moning

The most confused we ever get is when we're trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie. — Karen Marie Moning

The paranoid one's wards are still active. They keep me several feet from the building."
"But not his car," I said, a smile tugging at my lips. Barrons would go nuts if he knew that V'lane had touched his Viper. And stretched out on it nude? He'd have an aneurysm. — Karen Marie Moning

The most critical, defining battles we wage in life, we wage alone. Against ourselves. It — Karen Marie Moning

One day you will kiss a man you can't breathe without, and find that breath is of little consequence. — Karen Marie Moning

He gives me a look that says, "Dude, if I knew that do you think I'd have enlisted your puny help?"
I snicker.
"Something funny here."
"You. All prickly and pissed 'cause there's something you don't know. Got to call on the megaservices of the Mega."
"Ever occur to you I'm using you for reasons your inferior human brain can't begin to understand. — Karen Marie Moning

Let me be your anchor. I'll never let you be lost again. — Karen Marie Moning

Surrounded by alpha males that know more magic than all the teachers at Hogwarts, I'm about to ask who's going to do what to get us through the gate, when it becomes a moot point. — Karen Marie Moning

He may not have yet seduced her into his bed, but he'd succeeded in seducing her into his life in countless other ways, each an invisible, silken knot, binding her to him as he lured her deeper into his world. — Karen Marie Moning

Ego and superego were dispatched with a single swift, killing blow and in swaggered my new ruler - that primitive little hedonistic bastard, the id. — Karen Marie Moning

Wishes aren't horses and I don't get to ride. — Karen Marie Moning

How do you brace yourself for a collision with the unimaginable? — Karen Marie Moning

The two of you are getting downright chatty, aren't you, Ms. Lane? When did you last see him? what else did he tell you?
I'm asking the questions tonight.
If an illusion of control comforts you, Ms. Lane, by all means, cling to it. — Karen Marie Moning

She's my baby girl, Quinn. I want love for her. Real love. The kind that makes a man crazy inside.
-Gibraltar to Quinn — Karen Marie Moning

We're translating the Kama Sutra, Barrons said, with interactive aids. — Karen Marie Moning

He kissed like no man she'd ever known. There was something about him, a rawness, an earthy sensuality that bordered on barbaric, something she'd never be able to explain to someone else. A woman had to be kissed by Dageus MacKeltar to fully understand how devastating it was. How it could bring a woman to her knees. — Karen Marie Moning

Do you think love just goes away? Pops out of existence when it becomes too painful or inconvenient, as if you never felt it?"
I looked at him. What did Jericho Barrons know of love?
"If only it did. If only it could be turned off. It's not a faucet. Love's a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it - and then usually only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it's done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life. You loved her yesterday, you love her today. And she did something that devastates you. You'll love her tomorrow. — Karen Marie Moning

As if they were supposed to have made a direct hit, to have a long, full, crazy, wild, passion-filled, child-strewn life together, but somehow they'd come at each other from the wrong angle, and missed what could have/would have/should have been. — Karen Marie Moning

He sounded positively hostile. I could tell he was about to hang up. "Wait a minute. Who's IYCGM?" "If you can't get me," he gritted. "And IYD?" "If you're dying, Ms. Lane. But if I were you, I'd call that one only if I was sure I was dying, otherwise I'll kill you myself." I heard a man in the background laugh. The line went dead. — Karen Marie Moning

Like a horse, honey, somebody's gonna break you.'
'Never. Going. To. Happen. — Karen Marie Moning

Still, to me, the bottom line wasn't about the Dark Book at all. It was about uncovering the details of my sister's secret life. I didn't want the creepy thing. I just wanted to know who or what had killed Alina, and I wanted him or it dead. Then I wanted to go home to my pleasantly provincial po-dunk little town in steamy southern Georgia and forget about everything that had happened to me while I was in Dublin. The Fae didn't visit Ashford? Good. I'd marry a local boy with a jacked-up Chevy pickup truck, Toby Keith singing "Who's Your Daddy?" on the radio, and eight proud generations of honest, hardworking Ashford ancestors decorating his family tree. Short of essential shopping trips to Atlanta, I'd never leave home again. But — Karen Marie Moning

He would seduce her so thoroughly that she would no longer be able to conceive of herself apart from him; she would be his for the taking, anytime he wanted, anywhere, and in any way he chose to take her, able to deny him nothing. He — Karen Marie Moning

You choose what you can live with and what you can't live without. — Karen Marie Moning

People treat you as badly as you let them treat you. Key word there: let. — Karen Marie Moning

There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies. — Karen Marie Moning

This man would not kiss me as I like to be kissed but as he does. His way is too hard, demanding, dangerous. His way is not love. It is passion and it burns. Incinerates. — Karen Marie Moning

God, the floor is cold! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! I just thought "God." I don't use that word. Do I believe? Have I found faith here, on my knees, now, at the end? That seems kind of hypocritical-like to me. Ain't dying a hypocrite. — Karen Marie Moning

He closes his hand around mine and I hold on. I like his hand. It's big and holds easy but sure. It's the kind of hold that says, I got you if you want me, but I'll let you go if you feel like running for a while. — Karen Marie Moning

TIME IS THE ONLY TRUE GOD, AND I AM FOREVER. THEREFORE, I AM GOD.
Your logic is flawed. Time is not forever. It is always. Past, Present, and Future. There was a time in the past when you did not exist. Therefore, you are not God.
I CREATE. I DESTROY.
With the whimsy of a spoiled child.
YOU FAIL TO DIVINE THE MASTER DESIGN. EVEN THAT WHICH YOU CALL CHAOS HAS PATTERN AND PURPOSE. — Karen Marie Moning

Some shadowy, self-destructive, confused place no longer existed inside me. I was of a single, clear mind. There were goals, and there were methods to attain them. There were my chosen responsibilities and those things I was willing to do to honor them. There were the things I was willing to live with and the things I wasn't willing to live without. There was a quiet, deep abiding love of myself - flaws and all, and I had plenty - and the world around me, and it had plenty, too. — Karen Marie Moning

I return my attention to the situation at hand and realize Reality - the impatient bitch - has made my decision for me. She does that a lot. You get busy planning your life, then it has the nerve to just go ahead and happen to you before you're ready. Before you even get the chance to aim yourself right! — Karen Marie Moning

I don't have any idea what to wear anymore, so I tried to cover all bases."
"Try skin."
"Little chilly for that."
We looked at each other across the coffee table.
His eyes didn't say, I'd heat you up, and mine didn't say What are you waiting for? He didn't reply, Fuck if I'm making the first move, so I was careful not to say, I wish you would, because I can't, because I'm ... and he didn't snap ... choking on your pride?!
"As if you aren't."
"Excuse me?"
"Really Barrons," I said drily. "I'm not the only one who didn't just not have that conversation, and you know it."
There was the faint, sexy lift of his lip. "You're a piece of work, Ms. Lane."
"Right back at you. — Karen Marie Moning

Caveat: what you fear most will destroy you. — Karen Marie Moning

It's all black and white to you, isn't it?" "Gray is but another word for light black. Gray is never white. Only white is white. There are no shades of it. — Karen Marie Moning

I've been in your skin," he taunted. "I know you inside and out. There's nothing there. Do us all a favor and die so we can start working on another plan and quit thinking maybe you'll grow the fuck up and be capable of something. — Karen Marie Moning

Not threatening - warning. I haven't been hunting it this long and gotten this close to let anyone get in my way and fuck things up. There are two kinds of people in this world, Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost, and those who are walking victims." He pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I felt his tongue where my pulse fluttered, tracing my vein. "You, Ms. Lane, are a victim, a lamb in a city of wolves. I'll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. — Karen Marie Moning

Alone, my arse, he thought. I'll walk in alone, while my men sneak up behind them and destroy every last one of the bastards who took my woman. — Karen Marie Moning

Dude, got eyes? I'm collecting evidence." [ ... ]
"In Ziploc bags."
"I think they're Glad."
"They look impartial to me. — Karen Marie Moning

She knew what she wanted: the best. He knew what he was: the best. They enhanced each other's finest qualities, as true love will. — Karen Marie Moning

According to Keltar legend, each Druid born into the clan was destined for a soul mate, a perfect match in heart and mind, as well as body, coming together with an explosive, incendiary passion that could not be denied. If the Keltar male exchanged the sacred Druid binding vows with his true love, and his mate willingly returned them, they could bind their souls together for all eternity, in this life and forever beyond. The vows linked them inextricably. 'Twas said if a Keltar gave the vows and they were not returned, he would be forever incomplete, missing a part of his heart, aching for the love of a woman he could never have, eternally bound to her, through this life and all his future existence, whether in the cycle of rebirth, heaven, hell, or even an eternal Unseelie prison. If aught must be lost ... the legendary vows began, 'twill be my life for yours ... — Karen Marie Moning

I feel like I'm stuck in an IFCF." I raised a brow. "Interdimensional Fairy Cluster Fuck," she said sourly. — Karen Marie Moning

Never underestimate a well-dressed bimbo. — Karen Marie Moning

We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our , or fractured by a permanent, damming fault line. — Karen Marie Moning

Open your eyes and say my name."
I squeeze them shut more tightly.
"It would make my cock hard to hear you say my name."
My eyes pop open. "Jericho Barrons," I say sweetly.
He makes a pained sound. "Bloody hell, woman, I think a part of me wants to keep you this way."
I touch his face. "I like how I am. I like how you are, too. When you are ... What is that word you used? Cooperating."
"Tell me to fuck you."
I smile and comply. We're back in territory I understand.
"You didn't say my name. Say my name when you tell me to fuck you."
"Fuck me, Jerricho Barrons."
"From now on, you will call me Jericho Barrons every time you speak to me. — Karen Marie Moning

Love hath no pride. — Karen Marie Moning

Barrons' lips twitched. I'd almost made him smile. Barrons smiles about as often as the sun comes out in Dublin, and it has the same effect on me; makes me feel warm and stupid. — Karen Marie Moning

You came to Dublin, avenging angel, and what's the first thing you did? Fucked the devil. Oops, shit, eh? — Karen Marie Moning

Like sheep, sidhe-seers herd by nature, until you *want* them to go somewhere. Then they're all fluffy bottoms and broken. — Karen Marie Moning

I look up but don't spot him. "I take care of myself. I ain't living with nobody. Got my own digs. What are you doing up there?"
"Tracking the Hag. Trying to devise a way to trap her. She's fast but she's not a sifter."
I jerk, and look around warily. That's all we need right now. "Is she here?"
"If you brought that crazy bitch near me again." Ryodan doesn't finish his sentence. He doesn't need to. — Karen Marie Moning

Sun, moon, and stars. — Karen Marie Moning

Had he stood outside my door as I'd stood outside his, fists at his sides, lips drawn back? Did it have him as bad as it had me? Was it eating at him, gnawing at him with the same sharp vicious little teeth that wouldn't let me sleep?
Yes, it was. I could see the rage of insatiable uninvited lust in every line of that dark, stoic face that had once been too subtly etched for me to read. I wasn't the only one lying awake at night, fevered with memories, tossing, turning, soaking my sheets, burning up
not for Fae sex, but him, damn it all to hell, him. — Karen Marie Moning

I didn't have time to change."
"Then you'll make it now. I'm not working on you with that
much death on your skin. — Karen Marie Moning

He calls me his Queen of the Night. He shows me the wonders in this incredible city. He encourages me to find my own way, and to choose what I think is right or wrong.
And the sex, God, the sex! I never knew what sex was until him! It's not soft music and candlelight, a choice, a deliberate action.
It's as involuntary as breathing, and as impossible not to do. It's slammed up against a wall in a dark alley, or flat on my back on cold concrete because I can't stand one more second without him. It's on my hands and knees, dry-mouthed, heart-in-my-throat, waiting for the moment he touches me, and I'm alive again. It's punishing and purifying, velvet and violent, and it makes everything else melt away, until nothing matters but getting him inside me and I wouldn't just die for him - I'd kill for him, too.
Like I did tonight. — Karen Marie Moning

I'll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. The nerve. I'd had to bite my tongue on the juvenile impulse to snap, Or what? - you're not the boss of me, second only to an even more juvenile impulse to call my mom and wail, Nobody likes me here and I don't even know why! — Karen Marie Moning

He stared at her a long moment, his eyes narrowed. "Lass," he said softly, "if you tried to leave me, I fear I wouldn't let you. I fear I would do whatever I had to do, no matter how ruthless, to keep you." "I consider myself warned," she said pertly. "Trust me, I'm not going anywhere. Now tell me. — Karen Marie Moning

Put me down. I can walk." "Nay. I've no desire for you to be master of your destiny in any manner, however small. You are too unpredictable." "I'm unpredictable?" "Aye." She was speechless a moment. Then she pinched his butt, hard. "Ow!" He smacked her bottom. "Ow!" she yelped. "Behave," he growled. "Tit for tat, lass. Remember that. — Karen Marie Moning

I hope when I'm ninety-five the only things I want are free: love, family, a good home-cooked meal. — Karen Marie Moning

God the horror of watching yourself from the outside as everything you know about yourself gets stripped away and demolished. Not just the loss of power over your body, but power over your mind. Rape in the deepest, most hellish sense of the word. But wait, there's a spark. Inside that hollowed out woman there's a place they can't touch. There's more to me than I thought there was. Something that no one and nothing can take away from me. They can't break me. I won't cease. I'm strong, and I am never going to go away until I've gotten what I came for. I might have been lost for awhile but I was never gone. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? With an explosive inhalation I snap upright in bed, and my eyes fly open like coming alive after being dead and interred in a coffin. I AM Mac and I am BACK! — Karen Marie Moning

I looked him up and down. Once before I'd seen Jericho Barrons wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It's like sheet-metaling a W16 Bugatti Veyron engine - all 1,001 horsepower of it - with the body of a '65 Shelby. The height of sophisticated power sporting in-your-face, fuck-you muscle. The effect is disturbing.
He had more tattoos now than he'd had a few days ago.when I'd last seen him wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat, his arms were unmarked. They were now sleeved in intricate crimson and black designs, from bicep to hand. A silver cuff gleamed in his wrist. There were chains on his boots.
"Slumming, huh?" I'd said
You should talk, said those dark eyes, as they swept my black leather ensemble. — Karen Marie Moning

You can't go forward if you're looking backward. You run into walls that way. — Karen Marie Moning

The bottom line is we choose our epitaphs. — Karen Marie Moning

Nobody home but She for Whom I Am the World. Can't go on like this, can't keep doing it.- Jericho Barrons — Karen Marie Moning

Vows, like wishes, are dangerous things. Precision matters. — Karen Marie Moning

What kind of idiot breaks all his bones at the precise moment his damsel needs him the most? — Karen Marie Moning

Perspective is a funny thing. You think your back is to the wall, then something worse corners you, and the first threat looks puny in comparison. — Karen Marie Moning

I thought you were disgusted by the people that come to my club." "They're still people." He presses the button again. "If you go outside, you will be killed. If you make noise, you will be sent outside. Don't piss me off." Just like that, Chester's goes completely silent. — Karen Marie Moning

Liminal sucks. You can't grasp it with your hands and shape it. You can't make midnight come faster, or grow up sooner, or avoid the in-betweens. You can only hang in there, and get through them. — Karen Marie Moning

Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style, park your own car out front. — Karen Marie Moning

And here we go. She's bristling and my hackles go up. Bloody hell, I feel fangs coming on. Tell you what, Ms. Lane," Barrons said softly, "Anytime you want to have a conversation with me, leave the myriad issues you have with wanting to fuck me every time you look at me outside my cave, come on in, and see what you find. You might like it. — Karen Marie Moning

Holy psychotic PCs, Robin, we've a murderous MacBook on the loose! — Karen Marie Moning

You told me i was your world.
It wasn't me. I was an animal."
My heart pounded. My cheeks burned.
You never wanted it to end.
"Why are you being such a jackass, slamming me in the face with my own humiliation?"
Humilation? That's what you call this? He forced a more detailed reminder on me.
I swallowed. Yes, I certainly remembered that. "I was out of my mind. I'd never have done it otherwise."

Really, his dark eyes mocked, and in them I was demanding more, telling him I wanted it to always be this way.
I remembered what he'd replied: that one day I would wonder if it was possible to hate him more. — Karen Marie Moning