“They came for Manchuria first. They will come for Shanghai next, swallow up the coastal city where they have already been allowed land and law. The empire across the sea is small. And when this is an age of expansion, they will claim that invasion must be performed in self-defense, that it is a necessity while their people grow hungrier, a population with mouths to feed and feet to plant.”

“That’s ridiculous—I would never kick him onto the sofa,” Juliette replied. “If he ever angers me, a better punishment would be for him to continue sleeping next to me, feeling the power of my wrath.”

The rest of us have to keep racing along the hamster wheel of relevance.

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Privilege accumulates as you advance in life.

At some point in recent history, the global economy stopped making sense.

The world is changing, and the more penitent humans there are, the less it’s “socially acceptable” to acknowledge the existence of magic.

“Don’t underestimate the psychological value of that feeling of direct connection with the author as a compensation for what might seem like worldly sacrifice required by heresy.”

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.