Natalie Mae > Quotes

“All good stories start with bad decisions.”
― Natalie Mae, The Kinder Poison

“You have the kind of power that stays with someone for a lifetime. Magical fire awes, magical swords cut. But not a single person on their deathbed remembers those things. They remember the people who loved them.”
― Natalie Mae, The Kinder Poison

“Good can come from even the most lost of causes.”
― Natalie Mae, The Cruelest Mercy

“What a sweet, miserable betrayal this was, for Kasta to give me everything I wanted, to be everything I needed, to make me love him, and then leave me here alone.”
― Natalie Mae, The Sweetest Betrayal

“And I wonder if this is why the travelers' tales are so spectacular. If, behind every story about a felled tiger or supposed dragon, there is a real person, someone the storyteller wishes to forget in the only way she knows, which is to retell the story again and again until even she believes it was a dragon, and not a boy, who left her with so many scars.”
― Natalie Mae, The Kinder Poison

“Do you know why it's important to face our fears? [..] Because that's the only way we can change them.”
― Natalie Mae, The Kinder Poison

“I need to yell at you for so many more things," I say as he grits his teeth. "And you need to fix these bracelets, because I blew them right up, and then you need to help me set terms for the war we just stopped, because there's nothing we can't do together. Things are going to be perfect now." I believe it with everything I have, If my magic can will others to do what I want, then maybe it can will him to live. "We're going to go back, and you're going to be Mestrah and we're going to keep pulling each other up whenever we need it, because that's how stories like this are supposed to end. Good things happen when you do good things. And we're going to get along and be happy..."
"I need this in writing." But his voice is fading. "I'm going to bring it out every time you argue with me."
"That's it." I grab his hand when it slips from my cheek. "Stay awake and fight with me. Think of all the fights we haven't had yet. Who's going to suggest all the irrational, terrible ideas if you're not there?"
A flicker of a smile. His eyes are closing. "You'll do that just fine on your own."
I let out half a laugh, half a cry, and stifle it. "Please don't. Please stay with me.”
― Natalie Mae, The Sweetest Betrayal

“southern fleet insisting it was barbaric to attack us when we weren’t engaging and the queen going mad over some claim that I made her daughter averse to marriage, that official reports are that the queen attacked me out of paranoia, and I tried to retreat peacefully, but was struck down and had to be rescued, and then someone unearthed that the queen had lured me there with the intention of selling both Sakira and me to Wyrim, and now the people of Greka are calling for her resignation and Iris’s rise. “I tried to take over a small kingdom,” I say. “Very good,” Hen says. “And taking a kingdom over by force is bad because . . .?” I scoff. “It wasn’t technically force—” But Jet gives me a slow, disapproving shake of his head, and I clear my throat. “Because controlling people is wrong, and I’m trying to prove that magic is not a weapon.”
― Natalie Mae, The Sweetest Betrayal

“Maybe this is a cruel mercy, to spare him from servitude only to chain him to me instead.”
― Natalie Mae