So Nesta had become a wolf. Armed herself with invisible teeth and claws, and learned to strike faster, deeper, more lethally. Had relished it. But when the time came to put away the wolf, she’d found it had devoured her, too.

It’s a time of rest, too. And a time to reflect on the darkness—how it lets the light shine.

My friends—they had gone to war and back and had not found it worthy of glorification, had not let its memory become rose-tinted in the centuries following.

When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.

You don’t hold on to power by being everyone’s friend.

Nothing comes from nothing. No brain is an island.

Integrity is meaningless when your highest good lies in your immediate advantage of the moment. Integrity can’t be sustained in a person who privileges their feelings over factual reality.

Doubts, like ghosts, gain strength in darkness

Men find it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.

A Most Agreeable Murder feels as if Bridgerton and Agatha Christie came together, with a sprinkling of Twilight, and made a book.

Sometimes it’s better to be happy than right.

Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

Anxiety works by anticipating and inhibiting. It says: Don’t do that, you’ll get hurt. Don’t do that, you’ll be disappointed. Don’t do that, you’ll embarrass yourself. Anxiety likes routine. It likes predictability. It likes knowing outcomes.

If you shrink yourself to the smallness of your circumstances, you’ll soon disappear.

Words are our tools of resurrection.

There is no one predator from which to escape; there are many. We are in the business of running now. It is all so urgent. Every year, it seems we must run harder. There is no other solution. We can only run, and panic, and chatter out our fears to others, who will mirror them back to us.

It’s not been an easy year, but I’m so incredibly fortunate. Please enjoy my annual list of things I’ve learned.

What if we could handle the hard things better if we soaked up magic and wonder the rest of the time?

Wasting talent like yours is like burning a pile of money in front of a poorhouse. It’s cruel and it stinks.

Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.