...if his cruelty had the sharp edge of despair, if slights and taunts were all that fell from his tongue now, what did it matter? He had always been awful. Now he was just worse.

Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh. Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.

Jude Duarte about Cardan Greenbriar: He's so beautiful, so perfectly, horribly, inhumanly beautiful that I can barely breathe.

I am tired of your stories; But oh, I think there's a lesson in it, princeling: A sharp tongue is no match for a sharp tooth.

Jude, you don't think monster girls and wicked boys deserve love?

Mortals might argue to be told only truths and to tell only truths are two of the most tender thing people can do to each other. Yet, that is a very shallow meaning of honesty, and a very infantile thought that comes only from lacking of it in the first place.

Honesty is hamstringing; humiliating and disarming. To tell the truth is to let yourself be stripped bare. Because if someone tells you that lies are only used for deceit and manipulation, that person must be the most foolish of all, or one who knows nothing on how to use it; you don't give guns to a swordsman, nor do you give katana to a marksman.

What do you do, if you can't lie, to hide your anger and want to snap at someone? Do you convince yourself it is not a problem, or do you exile yourself? What do you do when you are terrified, or nervous, or anything somewhere in between? Do you laugh about it, just like I always do?

What do you do, Jude, if you can't lie, if someone like you come to me and ask me if I desire you?

Do you answer like I do? With a laugh and shifted gaze, "What a gruesomely moronic question to ask."