Holly Black, White Cat

"We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be"

"She tastes like every dark thought I've ever had."

"Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty."

"Once someone's hurt you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you from wanting them. Sometimes I actually think it makes the wanting worse."

"There’s a tipping point with lies, a point where you’ve said something so many times that it feels truer than the truth."

"The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con."

"Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying"

"It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts of books. But they got used up."

"I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria. But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense. All friendships are negotiations of power."

"But I didnt do anything wrong.." Which is stupid of course, things dont happen to people because they deserve them."

"Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles."

"I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don't even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I'm going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn't involve dying."

"The inside is packed with people. Lots of them crowding the bar, passing drinks back for people to carry to tables. A bunch of guys are pouring shots of vodka."To Zacharov!" one toasts."To open hearts and open bars!" calls another."And open legs," says Anton."

"Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts."