Hannah Perry

“Sam frowns at me, suddenly serious. "You know, I thought--for most of the first year we lived together--that you were going to kill me."

That makes me nearly spit out beer, I laugh so hard.

"No, look--living with you, it's like knowing there's a loaded gun on the other side of the room. You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat."

That only makes me laugh harder.

"Shut up," he says. "You might do normal stuff, but a leopard can drink milk or fall off things like a house cat. It's obvious you're not--not like the rest of us. I'll look over at you, and you'll be flexing your claws, or I don't know, eating a freshly killed antelope."

"Oh," I say. It's a ridiculous metaphor, but the hilarity has gone out of me. I thought I did a good job of fitting in--maybe not perfect, but not as bad as Sam makes it sound.

"It's like Audrey," he says, stabbing the air with a finger clearly well on his way to inebriated and full of determination to make me understand his theory. "You acted like she went out with you because you did this good job of being a nice guy."

"I am a nice guy."

I try to be.

Sam snorts. "She liked you because you scared her. And then you scared her too much.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove

“The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove

“Gifts are very useful to con men. Gifts create a feeling of debt, an itchy anxiety that the recipient is eager to be rid of by repaying. So eager, in fact, that people will often overpay just to be relieved of it. A single spontaneously given cup of coffee can make a person feel obligated to sit through a lecture on a religion they don't care about. The gift of a tiny, wilted flower can make the recipient give to a charity they dislike. Gifts place such a heavy burden that even throwing away the gift doesn't remove the debt. Even if you hate coffee, even if you didn't want that flower, once you take it, you want to give something back. Most of all, you want to dismiss obligation.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove

“I survive at the edge of friends circles.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove