Do you love me, Westley? Is that it?’
He couldn’t believe it. ‘Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches. If your love were—‘
‘I don’t understand the first one yet,’ Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. ‘Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is the size of a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images just confuse me so—is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we’re on the verge of something just terribly important.’
‘I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids….Is any of this getting through to you, Buttercup, or do you want me to go on for a while?’
‘Never stop.’
‘There has not been—‘
‘If you’re teasing me, Westley, I’m just going to kill you.’
‘How can you even dream I might be teasing?’
‘Well, you haven’t once said you loved me.’
‘That’s all you need? Easy. I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.’
‘You are teasing now; aren’t you?’
‘A little maybe; I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard, and you never heard.
I'm going to wake Peeta," I say.
"No, wait," says Finnick. "Let's do it together. Put our faces right in front of his."
Well, there's so little opportunity for fun left in my life, I agree. We position ourselves on either side of Peeta, lean over until our faces are inches frim his nose, and give him a shake. "Peeta. Peeta, wake up," I say in a soft, singsong voice.
His eyelids flutter open and then he jumps like we've stabbed him. "Aa!"
Finnick and I fall back in the sand, laughing our heads off. Every time we try to stop, we look at Peeta's attempt to maintain a disdainful expression and it sets us off again.
Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?
Don't go far off, not even for a day,
because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
Cole,†I said, “do you think I’m lovable?â€
“As in ‘cuddly and’?â€
“As in ‘able to be loved,’†I said.
Cole’s gaze was unwavering. Just for a moment, I had the strange idea that I could see exactly what he had looked like when he was younger, and exactly what he’d look like when he was older. It was piercing, a secret glimpse of his future. “Maybe,†he said. “But you won’t let anybody try.â€
I closed my eyes and swallowed. “I can’t tell the diference between not fighting,†I said,“and giving up.â€
Despite my eyelids being tightly shut, a single, hot tear ran out of my left eye. I was so angry that it had escaped. I was so angry.
Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn’t know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it waslike a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole’s hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the
skin next to my jaw. It wasn’t a touch that said “I need moreâ€. It was a touch that said “I want this.â€
It was all completely soundless. I didn’t think either of us was breathing.
Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered.
He said, “That’s how I would kiss you, if I loved you.
Clary shut her eyes. You didn't say no to an angel, no matter what it had in mind. Her heart pounding, she sat floating in the darkness behind her eyelids, resolutely trying not to think of Jace. But his face appear against the blank screen of her closed eyelids anyway - not smiling at her but looking sidelong, and she could see the scar at his temple, the uneven curl at the corner of his mouth, and the silver line on his throat where Simon had bitten him - all the marks and flaws and imperfections that made up the person she loved most in the world. Jace. A bright light lit her vision to scarlet, and she fell back against the sand, wondering if she was going to pass out - or maybe she was dying - but she didn't want to die, not now that she could see Jace's face so clearly in front of her. She could almost hear his voice, too, saying her name, the way he'd whispered it at Renwick's, over and over again. Clary. Clary. Clary.
"Clary," Jace said. "Open your eyes.
Home
Random Quotes
Authors
Illustrated Quotes
