Kendare Quotes & Sayings

We've got our heads pulled low inside of our hooded sweatshirts and our eyes are shifty. We look exactly like you'd expect someone to look if they were minutes away from committing a major crime. — Kendare Blake

She talks like she thinks I'm a schoolboy with fantasies of heroes who get the girl and ride off into the sunset. What kind of world does she think I grew up in? — Kendare Blake

The gods of war are about to bleed. — Kendare Blake

They shouldn't be allowed to teach math so early in the morning. — Kendare Blake

If life were fair, Carmel would turn around and look into his eyes, see that he's her willing slave, and be grateful. She'd lift him up and he wouldn't be a slave anymore, he'd just be Thomas, and they'd be glad to have each other. But life isn't fair. She'll probably end up with Will, or some other jock, and Thomas will suffer quietly. — Kendare Blake

I'm not a superhero, I say. It's an awful tag. It's egotistical, and it doesn't fit. I don't parade around in spandex. — Kendare Blake

They rationalized their fears away. People shouldn't do that. — Kendare Blake

Fear kept you sharp, that it kept you steadfastly holding on to your life. — Kendare Blake

She draws her sister's blood with a pair of silver shears. What was meant to simply trim her hair has instead shorn off an ear. — Kendare Blake

I've seen most of what
there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth,
the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the
light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can't forget
are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination.
Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes
blurry. Eyes remember for much longer. — Kendare Blake

The sisters she loved at the Black Cottage are gone. Arsinoe saw her chance and she took it. So next time, Mirabella will take hers aswell. — Kendare Blake

I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that
every breath was charmed and crisp. — Kendare Blake

Death is my world. — Kendare Blake

Don't profane yourself, or the Biodag Dubh.
Oh, Mary Ann. Me and the Beedak Doo are just fine. — Kendare Blake

But hey, at least we'll have this strange story to tell, love and death and blood and daddy-issues. And holy crap, I'm a psychiatrist's wet dream. — Kendare Blake

Your morality isn't the only morality in the world. Just because it's yours doesn't mean it's right. — Kendare Blake

Fate was the only lesson a god needed to learn. It was their only hard limit. — Kendare Blake

I can feel that photo of Anna staring at me from sixty years ago, and I can't help myself from wanting to protect her, wanting to save her from becoming what she already is. — Kendare Blake

I live dangerously enough. Now what's this about condoms or tigers? — Kendare Blake

Her whole life they have thought her a failure, yet at the first hint of hope, they move to follow her, as if it is what they wanted all along.
Perhaps it was. — Kendare Blake

I don't think it is strange at all,' Arsinoe says. 'Don't you see? It has to be one of us. It has to be her. My whole life I have heard that it has to be her. That I have to die, so that she can lead. That I do not matter, because she's here. — Kendare Blake

Guys," he says. "After this is over, can we go get a burger or something?"
"You're thinking about food now?" Carmel asks.
"Hey, you haven't spent the last three days fasting and doing herbal rue steams and drinking nothing but Morfran's gross chrysanthemum purification potions." Carmel and I grin at each other in the mirror. "It isn't easy becoming a vessel. I'm freaking starving. — Kendare Blake

Death is my world. Everything else, school and friends, they're just things that get in the way of my next ghost. — Kendare Blake

Wolf Spring s not a city of finery. It is of fishers and farmers and folk on the docks, and no one wears their fine blacks except on Beltane. — Kendare Blake

I'll be here if he needs me. I'll watch his back."
Carmel smiles. "Better watch all sides. He can be downright clumsy sometimes. — Kendare Blake

It was only a joke, Mia," says Bree gently. "Of course I do not wish that. No one really wishes to be queen. — Kendare Blake

Are we lost? You'd admit it if we were lost, right?"
Thomas smiles, maybe a bit nervously. "We're not lost. At least, not yet. They might've changed some of the roads around since the last time."
"Who the hell are 'they'? Road construction squirrels? It doesn't even look like these things have been driven on in the last ten years. — Kendare Blake

I sigh. "So now what? Can I possibly tell you to go home and forget about this? Is there any way that I can avoid us forming some peppy group of - " Before my mouth can finish, I lean forward and groan into my hands. Carmel gets it first, and laughs. "A peppy group of ghostbusters?" she asks. — Kendare Blake

You wouldn't think that people would believe that we all got so incredibly beat up - in so many interesting ways - from a bear attack. Especially not when Carmel is sporting a bite mark that is a spot-on match for wounds found at one of the most horrifying crime scenes in recent history. But I never fail to be surprised by what people will believe. — Kendare Blake

Girls on the other hand, have always come easy. I don't know why that is, exactly. Maybe it's the outsider vibe and a well-placed brooding look. — Kendare Blake

He went crazy over Greek mythology, which is where I got my name.

They compromised on it, because my mom loved Shakespeare, and I ended up called Theseus Cassio. Theseus for the slayer of the Minotaur, and Cassio for Othello's doomed lieutenant. I think it sounds straight-up stupid. Theseus Cassio Lowood. Everyone just calls me Cas. I suppose I should be glad--my dad also loved Norse mythology, so I might have wound up being called Thor, which would have been basically unbearable. — Kendare Blake

Having no choice doesn't seem fair.But having all of them isn't really easier. — Kendare Blake

What? she asks, but I don't answer. Instead I kiss her, one time, and try to tell her in that single gesture everything that she'll forget as soon as she turns away. I tell her I love her. I tell her I'll miss her. And then I let her go. — Kendare Blake

Land of the Dead? Is that what you dream about?" she asks. "Boy who kills ghosts for a living?"
"No. I dream about penguins doing bridge construction. Don't ask why. — Kendare Blake

But Jules will not give up. Not even if it is the queens' sixteenth birthday, and Beltane is in four months' time, falling like a shadow. — Kendare Blake

She's standing above me the goddess of death, black lips and cold hands. — Kendare Blake

If only it was an island rather than a pretty sleeping dog with sand on its paws and cliffs on its shoulders, waiting to wake it up and tear it. — Kendare Blake

t know why I can't stop being so combative. "Come on. People don't get butchered in this city every day. And the very night after I free the most powerful murderous ghost in the western hemisphere, somebody shows up missing — Kendare Blake

I come in all big and bad, and you use me for a game of handball." I grin. "Makes a guy feel damn manly. She grins back. "It made me feel pretty manly. — Kendare Blake

The rhythm of the footsteps, the sound of whatever is coming down the ladder is driving both me and my mom steadily toward peeing our pants. — Kendare Blake

This is what men risk so much for; this shiver, this acute heat and desire. This is what they think eternity feels like. — Kendare Blake

Anna's eyes soften, and the stubborn tears begin to recede. The way she stands, the way she breathes, I know she wants to come closer. New knowledge fills up the air between us and neither of us wants to breathe it in. — Kendare Blake

He was a god, he said, and always had been. Or at least, that was what they used to be called. What they were now, he didn't know. It seemed like the wrong word when he was so limited, so much less than he'd been before. — Kendare Blake

I've sort of been slacking off in my voodoo studies.I've trigonometry, you know? — Kendare Blake

Every time I question him about the feasibility, he smiles at me like he's Yoda and I'm just a dumbass without the Force. — Kendare Blake

My dad always said that water makes the dead feel safe. Nothing draws them more. Or hides them
better. — Kendare Blake

I get to be Peter Venkman," says Thomas. "Nobody gets to be anybody," I snap. "We are not ghostbusters. I've got the knife, and I kill the ghosts, and I can't be tripping over you the whole time. Besides, it's obvious that I would be Peter Venkman." I look sharply at Thomas. "You would be Egon. — Kendare Blake

Stand my ground, is what I think. After this is over, I might puke. Assuming, of course, that I'm still alive. — Kendare Blake

She raises her brows at Thomas and Carmel.
"How do you want to room? The two of you and the two of us? Or boys in one, girls in the other?"
"Boys in one," I say quickly.
"Right. Back in a minute." Jestine gets up to make the arrangements, leaving me with my gaping friends.
"Where'd that come from?" Carmel asks.
"Where'd what come from?"
As usual, playing dumb gets me nowhere. — Kendare Blake

I'm dead. I can't be all right any more than I can be not all right. — Kendare Blake

Damsels? You get sliced open, burned, and dashed against rocks about a thousand times or so. Then we'll see who the damsel is. — Kendare Blake

Chef?" Carmel exclaims. "I could give a shit about a chef. I'm going to find the most expensive thing in that kitchen, eat one bite, and throw the rest on the floor. Then I'm going to break some plates. — Kendare Blake

I like it more to come to a place like this, where the scent of death
is carried to you on every seventh breath. — Kendare Blake

I am your servant," he answers, and touches her cheek. "I am your slave. I am here to make sure every one of the suitors does not think of either of your sisters before they think of you. — Kendare Blake

Prometheus on the rock. Do you know that story? Every day he's punished for giving mortals fire by being strapped to a rock and having his liver eaten out by an eagle. I always thought it was a poor punishment. That he'd just get used to the pain, and the eagle would have to think of some new torture. But you don't. And he does. — Kendare Blake

I peek over the back of the couch and there she is, my goddess of death, her hair snaking out in a great black cloud, her teeth grinding hard enough to make living gums bleed. — Kendare Blake

I even had this idea that the knife stopped working, that after a certain time it just stops working for you, when your number is up. I thought maybe it was me who had done it. That I killed him just by growing older, and being ready to replace him. — Kendare Blake

We're in on the secret, aren't we, Cas? And it's taking us out of the world. — Kendare Blake

I jerk my head toward Thomas and immediately curse myself for trying to be a smartass. My head is not healthy enough for smartassery. — Kendare Blake

Thomas grins, grabs her hand, and kisses it. Since they just got back together, I'm willing to let this PDA business slide. — Kendare Blake

The cupboards start opening and closing by themselves, drawers slamming shut and the walls start to bleed. Slamming doors and smashing plates. Anna is acting like a common poltergeist. How embarrassing. — Kendare Blake

She's like Bruce Lee, the Hulk and Neo from The Matrix all rolled in to one. — Kendare Blake

I don't know why, but for a second, my brain was sure that it would be Anna, that she'd be pounding the door down off its hinges with blackveined fists, ready to catch me with my pants down. But we were just doing dishes. My pants are firmly affixed. — Kendare Blake

You fuck - you ate my cat! — Kendare Blake

In her mind, every last Queen lies at the bottom of the sea, drowned by the Goddess the moment she was done with them. — Kendare Blake

But somewhere out there is the one that matters. Somewhere out there is the one that I came for, one who is strong enough to squeeze the breath out of living throats.
I think of her again. Anna. Anna Dressed in Blood. — Kendare Blake

Move, hunt, kill. Like lather, rinse, and repeat. — Kendare Blake

Every gift is light and dark. — Kendare Blake

Only a king-consort is fool enough to love a queen, he says quietly. — Kendare Blake

I love her."
"She's dead."
"That doesn't mean to me what it does to other people. — Kendare Blake

Three dark queens
Are born in a glen,
Sweet little triplets
Will never be friends

Three dark sisters
All fair to be seen,
Two to devour
And one to be Queen — Kendare Blake

She's no ordinary ghost, that seems certain," he says. "I know. Something's made her stronger." "The way she died?" he asks. "I'm not sure. From what I've heard, she was just murdered like so many others. Throat slit. But now she's haunting her old house, killing whoever steps inside, like some goddamn spider. — Kendare Blake

I should think that is what anyone would wish- to be loved for themselves and not their position. — Kendare Blake

The boring story loses out, truth or not. That's just how it goes. — Kendare Blake

Part of her followed him, wherever it was that he went. — Kendare Blake

I finally find a girl I could really be with, maybe the only girl in the world, and I had what? Two months with her? It's not enough. After everything she went through - everything I went through - we deserve more than that. Or maybe we don't. Anyway, life doesn't work like that. It doesn't care about fair and unfair. — Kendare Blake

Do you see what I do? — Kendare Blake

And it's beyond my energy to explain why I don't think that four-letter word that everyone's so obsessed over and that gets everyone into so much trouble and pretty much makes everyone behave like an ass can live in a place like this. Somewhere during dry cleaning, details, and missed meals, it flakes away and what you're left with is married people with a tolerable affinity for each other. That little four-letter word can exist only in poetry, or movies of 2 to 3 hours in length. Maybe in a mini-series.
This place of dull details and irksome obligations is a home only to other four-letter words, which are used much more frequently. — Kendare Blake

I'm staring at Anna's house again. The logical part of my brain tells me that it's just a house. That it's what's inside that makes it horrifying, that makes it dangerous, that it can't possibly be tilting toward me like it's hunting me through the overgrowth of weeds. It can't possibly be trying to jerk free of its foundation and swallow me whole. But that's what it looks like it's doing. — Kendare Blake

You're sure you didn't leave? Didn't try to explore Thunder Bay again, maybe go down to the park and, I don't know, dismember some poor jogger? — Kendare Blake

The Mustang growled into reverse, aiming straight for the old lady.
Cassandra would have winced, even if she had been the most evil old woman on the face of the planet. Even if she had been granny-Hitler, she would have winced at the idea of running her down. But the thing standing in the road looked nothing like an old woman anymore. — Kendare Blake

The thought makes me reach back for my knife, my sharp, throat-cutting security blanket, as I look around. — Kendare Blake

It's the twenty-first century. Arriving to find a bunch of old dudes in brown robes would be equally weird. — Kendare Blake

I don't believe that." She seems like suck a force,this reasonable girl who kills with a turn of her fingers. She would have left all this behind, if she had the chance. "I honestly don't remember," she sighs "I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that every breath was charmed and crisp." she clasps her hands comically to her chest and breaths in deep through her nose, then blows it out in a huff. "I probably didn't. For all my dreams and fancies, I can't recall being ... what would you call it? Perky? — Kendare Blake

I was ordinary," she said. "I blended in." "Impossible. With Aidan? You can't blend in with something that pretty on your arm. — Kendare Blake

Without a word, we start to walk together down the long hall. I'm so pent up and irritated with this place; I want to kick down the closed doors and break up a prayer circle, maybe juggle the athame with a couple of candles just to see the horrified looks on their faces and hear their screams of "Sacrilege! — Kendare Blake

Except for the severe coloring, Arsinoe does not look much like a queen. Her hair is rough, and they cannot keep her from cutting it. Her black trousers are the same ones she wears everyday, and so is her light black jacket. The only piece of finery they could get her into for the occasion was a new scarf that Madrigal found at Pearson's, made from the wool of their fancy, flop-eared rabbits. — Kendare Blake

I'm just saying it doesn't always have to be spirits and magic. Sometimes hauntings are in your mind. It doesn't make them less real. — Kendare Blake

The state of shock is losing its
charm. I want my brain back. Can't it just shake itself off like
a dog already and get back to work? — Kendare Blake

Carmel's a very pretty girl," she says hopefully. "Thomas seems to think so." She sighs, then smiles. "Good. He could use a woman's touch."
"Mom," I groan. "Gross." "Not that kind of touch," she laughs. — Kendare Blake

Will Carmel eventually forget about this adventurous time with us? Will she shun Thomas and go back to being the center of SWC? She wouldn't do that, would she? I mean, she did just compare me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My opinion of her isn't the highest right now. — Kendare Blake

This is my favorite part of the hunting. Getting to know them . Hearing their legends. I want them to be as large in my mind as they can possibly be, and when I see them I don't want to be disappointed. — Kendare Blake

Why are you here? Did you come to try to kill me again?" "Oddly enough, no. I - I had a bad dream. I needed to talk to someone. — Kendare Blake

She clears her throat and does her best to start, laying out the technical specs of last year's party: who was there; what they were doing; why they came with this or that person. I guess she wants me to have a full and realistic picture. Some people need that, I suppose. Personally, I'm the type who likes to fill in the blanks and make it my own. It's probably better that way than it really was. — Kendare Blake

Sometime playing dumb is the only move you've got. — Kendare Blake

Cassio," she whispers. "Get me out of here. — Kendare Blake

That's what they call you, on the mainland. Witches. That's what my father says that you are. Monsters. Beasts. But you are not a monster." "No," she says quietly. "And neither are the rest — Kendare Blake

We're not children, neither of us. We don't believe in fairy tales. And if we did, who would we be? Not Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty. I slice murder victims' heads off and Anna stretches skin until it rips, she snaps bones like green branches into smaller and smaller pieces. We'd be the fricking dragon and the wicked fairy. I know that. But I still have to tell her. — Kendare Blake

The sun and the moon went out and no one fu****g noticed! — Kendare Blake

I look up at the moon. It's bright, and
cold, and still looks full to me. But the
calendar says that it's waning, and people
get paid to make calendars, so I guess that
we're ready. — Kendare Blake