willowmoth > Recent Status Updates

"Death isn't beautiful. Death is filthy and unattractive and unkempt in every way. This is not the death meant for a healthy, youthful girl. This is for perverts, strangers who offer children candy to get into their vans. This is a death for men like my ex-stepfather, who always drunk and once, in my presence, hit my mom, knocking her to the floor.

I want to tell him he is has the wrong house."

"I make my own destiny and determine my own worth.
And I am worth quite a lot."

2026 energy. ✨️

This book is such a fun ride! 🩶

I AM NOT OKAY

While I am very much enjoying this book and the absolutely beautiful prose, I will say that I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by Luiprand's "golden aura." 🫠 It is distractingly repetitive.

I'm so afraid of where this is going. 😭

I haven’t had to use my dictionary yet, but Reid describing the contrast of a long beard and a bald head as “filamentary equilibrium” on page ELEVEN made me get it out in anticipation. 😂

"It wasn't even an alternate version of his life. He hadn't gone back in time and done everything differently to get to this place. It turned out that sometimes it's enough to start doing things differently now."

"No one loves anyone here. They all just scrape against each other, like rocks in a bag."

"For that instant, at least, they seemed one and the same, as though all anguish exists in the same deep well, no matter what loss or misfortune leads us to it. We might be at odds, hate each other, and desire each other's destruction, but in our despair, we are lost in the same darkness, breathing the same air as we choke on our grief."

"Thyon, earthbound, felt every choice he'd made, every action he'd taken, as a weight he carried with him. He wondered: Was it weight he could shed or throw off, or was it forever a part of him, as much as his bones and his hearts?"

"The mind is good at hiding things, but there's something it cannot do: It can't erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone. They rot. They fester, they leak poisons. They ache and stink. They hiss like serpents in tall grass."

"She watched him look down at their hands—at hers inside his much bigger one, both of them scarred and callused, a far cry from the young hands that had known each other so well. She saw him swallow, and close his eyes, and then gently, gently fold his fingers over hers.

And when her hearts resumed beating, she imagined she could feel a spill of light into the veins that carried her spirit."

"There was a man who loved the moon, but whenever he tried to embrace her, she broke into a thousand pieces and left him drenched, with empty arms."

"The unconscious mind is open terrain—no walls are barriers, for better or worse. Thoughts and feelings are free to wander, like characters leaving their books to taste life in other stories. Terrors roam, and so do yearnings. Secrets are turned out like pockets, and old memories meet new. They dance and leave their scents on each other, like perfume transferred between lovers. Thus is meaning made."

"All of this is ours, even the infinity..."

"...and just like that they were two people sitting at a table regarding each other shyly through a whisp of tea steam.
Inside a dream.
Within a lost city.
In the shadow of an angel.
At the brink of calamity."

"And so the Dreamer and the Goddess went shopping for a moon."

Taylor's writing gives these characters so much personality and liveliness; I cannot get enough of them!

I am thoroughly enjoying this so far. Taylor's writing is absolutely beautiful. I'm doing an immersive read (both audiobook and physical) thanks to Libby. I very highly recommend the audiobook.

"Do you want to end your days a half-blind troglodyte hobbling through the bowels of the library?"

Why, yes. Yes, I do. 😌✨️

"She raised a brow. 'So... are you going to do my laundry?"
Flight, fight, or sarcasm. 'What a horrid girl you are.'
'Ma'am. What a horrid girl you are, ma'am.'
Now he laughed."

I DEVASTATINGLY ADORE THEM 😭

'Dixwell', eh, Bardugo? Did you think we wouldn't notice that one? After two mentions of an oversized glow stick, 'dick swell' is hard to miss. 😂

"It's funny," she said at last. "People talk about life and death as if there's some kind of ticking clock."'
"There isn't?"
Alex shook her head slowly. "That tick tick tick isn't o'clock. It's a bomb. There's no countdown. It just goes off and everything changes."

"It's funny," she said at last. "People talk about life and death as if there's some kind of ticking clock."
"There isn't?"
Alex shook her head slowly. "That tick tick tick isn't o'clock. It's a bomb. There's no countdown. It just goes off and everything changes."

I adore Mercy and I'm so happy to see so much more of her in this book!! 🩶

"'Why did that work?' she asked. 'Why didn't it burn?'

'Stories exist in all worlds. They are immutable. Like gold.'"

Not the damned glowstick again!!! 😪😂

"'Bela Lugosi's dead,' she smiled at him. They'd become her favorite death words over the summer."

Starting out strong as usual, Bardugo. 😎

"What do you really want?
She had tried to come up with an answer to no avail. Maybe she did not want anything at all. She had never learned how to want; she had simply existed, until then. Her life was just a series of routines. At best, she could imagine things she did not want: dying, losing her job, starving, suffering. She did not want inconveniences. She did not want changes. She did not want."