laura’s Reviews > Januaries: Stories of Love, Magic & Betrayal > Status Update

"Well, from what I understand you have something other humans don't." "What, illness?" "No, wonder." "I think plenty of people have wonder." "Plenty have illness, too, as far as I can gather." "Okay, then what's significant about my personal wonder?" "Oh, I don't know. Sometimes it's so sad it makes my chest hurt. Other times it's so bright I can't look directly at it."

'I hate that if I cry, it shows weakness. He'll put it in my file, I'm feminine and soft, I'm a problem, I'm disobedient, he could write anything down that he likes. It doesn't matter how much blood I spill for this agency, or for him. I paid this price because it was what I had to do for freedom, but all it bought me was pain.'

'But then I remember that she can love me and still think I am only me. That I am only one person worth loving and not a thousand women, a million. That I am not every woman who was born without her fortune. That somehow she could watch me dry my tears and make no mistakes and believe that I alone am owed the privilege of her lucky stars.'

"What if what I lost makes me something less than what I was before?" "What if what you've gained makes you something greater?"

'[...] she and Guy planned a deeply Pinterest-infused destination bachelorette [...].' There's the Olivie Blake I know and love hehehe

'I have another crazy thing to say, and it is this, / You look loveliest when you're cursing me, / I really think you've found your calling, / It really suits you.'

'I'm sorry. I wanted to be the perfect form for you, the form you deserve, but I can't hold it. Even with the monsterlove, I am still only different forms of me.'

'My longing for death has fallen away, its contents as familiarly known as the shit-lickers outside these walls. What is the monotony of death compared to the thrill of reparation? Forget the void. Cast off the lure of nothingness. I choose pain and it is ecstasy. This is life, it is a gift!'

'It was tiresome how minimally he accepted what he was, judging his fate to be sealed without even pushing it to see if it bent. It was the one thing that made him different from his predecessors, though she couldn't decide if that made him better or worse.'

I could quote all of "The House," but that would take too much time. THIS is what I mean when I say I adore Olivie Blake's writing.