Mister Impossible Quotes

“A man in Florence once had a heart attack when he saw the Birth of Venus, if you can believe it,” said a voice beside him. “Palpitations are more common, though. That’s what Stendhal had. Couldn’t walk, he reported, after seeing a particularly moving work of art. And Jung! Jung decided it was too dangerous to visit Pompeii in his old age because the feeling—the feeling of all that art and history round him, it might kill him. Jerusalem… Tourists in Jerusalem sometimes wrap themselves in hotel bedsheets. To become works of art themselves, you know? Part of history. A collective unconscious toga party. One lady in the holy city decided she was giving birth to God’s son. She wasn’t even pregnant, before you ask. Funny what art will do to you. Stendhal Syndrome, they call it, after our lad with the palpitations, though I prefer its more modern name: Declan Lynch.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Ronan didn't care to think about this. It gave him the same vibe he used to get back at the Barns some nights, when he got trapped in one particular train of thought, where he imagined he and Adam had been together a very long time and then Ronan died of old age or bad choices and Adam found someone else and later they all three died and were reunited in the afterlife, and rather than getting to spend the rest of eternity together, Adam had to split his time between Ronan and this stupid usurper he'd fallen in love with as a widower, which completely ruined the point of Heaven. And that was before Ronan even got to worrying if Adam made it to the afterlife at all, with his agnostic tendencies.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Ronan's trying to wake up the world. I'm trying to think of how to talk him out of it, but what he's talking about is a world where she never fell asleep. A world where Matthew's just a kid. A world where it doesn't matter what Hennessy does, if something happens to her. A level playing field. I don't think it's a good idea, but it's not like I can't see the appeal, because now I'm biased, I'm too biased to be clear." Declan shook his head a little. "I said I would never become my father, anything like him. And now look at me. At us."

Ah, there it was.

It took no effort to remember the way he'd looked at her the first moment he realized she was a dream.

"I'm a dream," Jordan said. "I'm not your dream."

Declan put his chin in his hand and looked back out the window; that, too, would be a good portrait. Perhaps it was just because she liked looking at him that she thought each pose would make a good one. A series. What a future that idea promised, nights upon nights like this, him sitting there, her standing here.

"By the time we're married," Declan said eventually, "I want you to have applied for a different studio in this place because this man's paintings are very ugly."

Her pulse gently skipped two beats before continuing on as before. "I don't have a social security number of my own, Pozzi."

"I'll buy you one," Declan said. "You can wear it in place of a ring."

The two of them looked at each other past the canvas on her easel.

Finally, he said, voice soft, "I should see the painting now."

"Are you sure?"

"It's time, Jordan."

Putting his jacket to the side, he stood. He waited. He would not come around to look without an invite.

It's time, Jordan.

Jordan had never been truly honest with anyone who didn't wear Hennessy's face. Showing him this painting, this original, felt like being more honest than she had ever been in her life.

She stepped back to give him room.

Declan took it in. His eyes flickered to and from the likeness, from the jacket on Portrait Declan's leg to the real jacket he'd left behind on the chair. She watched his gaze follow the line edge she had taken such care to paint, that subtle electricity of complementary colors at the edge of his form.

"It's very good," Declan muttered. "Jordan, it's very good."

"I thought it might be."

"I don't know if it's a sweetmetal. But you're very good."

"I thought I might be."

"The next one will be even better."

"I think it might be."

"And in ten years your scandalous masterpiece will get you thrown out of France, too," he said. "And later you can triumphantly sell it to the Met. Children will write papers about you. People like me will tell stories about you to their dates at museums to make them think they're interesting."

She kissed him. He kissed her. And this kiss, too, got all wrapped up in the art-making of the portrait sitting on the easel beside them, getting all mixed in with all the other sights and sounds and feelings that had become part of the process.

It was very good.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Ronan hadn't thought much about the future.

This was a way he and Adam had always been opposites. Adam seemed to only think about the future. He thought about what he wanted to happen days or weeks or years down the road, and then he backfilled actions to make it happen. He was good at depriving himself in the now in order to have something better in the later.

Ronan, on the other hand, couldn't seem to get out of the now. He always remembered consequences too late. After a bloody nose. A broken friendship. A huge tattoo. A cat with human hands. But his head didn't seem built to hold the future. He could imagine it for just a few seconds until, like a weak muscle, his thoughts collapsed back into the present.

But there was one future he could imagine. It was a little bit of a cheat, because it was buried in a memory, and Ronan was better at thinking of the past than the future. It was an indulgent memory, too, one he'd never have copped to out loud. There wasn't much to it. It was from the summer after Adam had graduated, the summer he'd spent with Ronan at the Barns. Ronan had come in from working on the fences outdoors and tossed his work gloves onto the grass-cluttered rug by the mudroom door. As he did, he'd seen that Adam's mechanic gloves were lined up neatly on top of his shoes. Ronan had already known Adam was inside the house, but nonetheless, the image made him pause. They were just gloves, grease-stained and very old. Thrifty Adam always tried to get as much wear out of things as possible. They were long and narrow like Adam himself, and despite their age and stains, they were otherwise impeccably clean. Ronan's work gloves, in comparison, were cruddy and creased and coarse-looking, tossed with carefree abandon, the fingers lassoed over Adam's.

Seeing the two pairs tumbled together, a nameless feeling had suddenly overwhelmed Ronan. It was about Adam's gloves here, but it was also Adam's jacket tossed on the dining room chair, his soda can forgotten on the foyer table, him somewhere tossed with equal comfort in the Barns, his presence commonplace enough that he was not having to perform or engage with Ronan at all times. He was not dating Ronan; he was living in Ronan's life with him.

Shoes kicked off by the door, gloves off.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“The music from inside drowned out every other sound. It was the sort of music Ronan heard all the time when he was at Aglionby, the stuff that made him feel as if he truly were nothing like other people, not because he was gay or because his father had been murdered or because he could take things out of his dreams, but because he couldn't bring himself to sing along to the shit other students sang along to. Funny how a handful of people loving a song you couldn't stand could make you feel inhuman.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible

“Declan had been told a long time ago that he had to know what he wanted, or he'd never get it. Not by his father, because his father would never have delivered such pragmatic advice in such a pragmatic way. No, even if Niall Lynch believed in the sentiment, he would have wrapped it up in a long story filled with metaphor and magic and nonsense riddles. Only years after the storytelling would Declan be sitting somewhere and realize that all along Niall had been trying to teach him to balance his checkbook, or whatever the tale had really been about. Niall could never just say the thing.

No, this piece of advice--You have to know what you want, or you'll never get it--was given to Declan by a senator from Nevada he'd met during a DC field trip back in eighth grade. The other children had been bored by the pale stone restraint of the city and the sameness of the law and government offices they toured. Declan, however, had been fascinated. He'd asked the senator what advice he had for those looking to get into politics.

"Come from money," the senator had said first, and then when all the eighth graders and their teachers had stared without laughing, he added, "You have to know what you want, or you'll never get it. Make goals."

Declan made goals. The goal was DC. The goal was politics. The goal was structure, and more structure, and yet more structure. He took AP classes on political science and policy. When he traveled with his father to black markets, he wrote papers. When he took calls from gangsters and shady antique auction houses, he arranged drop-offs near DC and wrangled meetings with HR people. Aglionby Academy made calls and pulled strings; he got names, numbers, internships. All was going according to plan. His father's will conveniently left him a townhouse adjacent to DC. Declan pressed on. He kept his brothers alive; he graduated; he moved to DC.

He made the goal, he went towards the goal.

When he took his first lunch meeting with his new boss, he found himself filled with the same anticipation he'd had as an eighth grader. This was the place, he thought, where things happened. Just across the road was the Mexican embassy. Behind him was the IMF. GW Law School was a block away. The White House, the USPS, the Red Cross, all within a stone's throw.

This was before he understood there was no making it for him. He came from money, yeah, but the wrong kind of money. Niall Lynch's clout was not relevant in this daylight world; he only had status in the night. And one could not rise above that while remaining invisible to protect one's dangerous brother.

On that first day of work, Declan walked into the Renwick Gallery and stood inside an installation that had taken over the second floor around the grand staircase. Tens of thousands of black threads had been installed at points all along the ceiling, tangling around the Villareal LED sculpture that normally lit the room, snarling the railing over the stairs, blocking out the light from the tall arches that bordered the walls, turning the walkways into dark, confusing rabbit tunnels. Museumgoers had to pick their way through with caution lest they be snared and bring the entire world down with them.

He had, bizarrely, felt tears burning the corners of his eyes.

Before that, he hadn't understood that his goals and what he wanted might not be the same thing.

This was where he'd found art.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Mister Impossible