Review for White Cat by Holly Black will come tomorrow.
le memorable moments:
dedication:
"For all the fictional cats I've killed in other books."
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page 1:
"I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don't even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I'm going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn't involve dying."
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page 1&2:
"The night is quiet, the kind of hushed middle-of-the-night quiet that makes every shuffle or nervous panting breath echo."
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page 2:
"Cold makes my fingers numb. The adrenaline rush makes my brain sing."
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page 7:
"'But I didn't do anything wrong.'
Which is stupid, of course. Things don't happen to people because they deserve them. Besides, I've doe plenty wrong."
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page 9:
"I like to think we're sort of friends.
We don't hang out with many of the same people, which makes being sort of friends easier."
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page 11:
"I grin. 'You're the most untrustworthy guy I know.'
'Flattery will get you every," Sam says. 'Except, apparently, off a roof.'"
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page 12:
"Real bookies take a percentage, relying on a balanced book to guarantee a profit. Like, if someone puts don't five bucks on a fight, they're really putting down four fifty and the other fifty cents is going to the bookie. The bookie doesn't care who wins; he only cares that the odds work so he can use the money from the losers to pay the winners. I'm not a real bookie. Kids at Wallingford want to bet on silly stuff, stuff that might never come true. They have money to burn. So some of the time I calculate the odds the right way - the real bookie way - and some of the time I calculate the odds my way and just hope I get to pocket everything instead of paying out what I can't afford. You could say that I'm gambling too. You'd be right."
page 14:
"It was my mother who taught me that if you're going to screw someone over - with magic and wit, or wit alone - you have to know the mark better than he knows himself.
The first thing you have to do is gain his confidence. Charm him. Just be sure he thinks he's smarter than you are. The you - or ideally, your partner - suggest the score.
Let your mark get something right up front the first time. In the business that's called the "convincer." When he knows he's already got money in his pocket and can walk away, that's when he relaxes his guard.
The second go is when you introduce bigger stakes. The big score. This is the part my mother never has to worry about. As an emotion worker, she can make anyone trust her. But she still needs to go through the steps, so that later, when they think back on it, they don't figure out she worked them.
After that there's only the blow-off and the getaway.
Being a con artist means thinking that you're smarter than everyone else and that you've thought of everything. That you can get away with anything. That you can con anyone.
I wish I could say that I don't think about the con when I deal with people, but the difference between me and my mother is that I don't con myself."
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page 20:
"'My mother wants to talk with you. She says that what you did was a cry for help.'
'It was,' I say. 'That's why I was yelling 'Heeeelp!' I don't really go in for subtlety.'"
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page 22:
"Above the trees, their leaves the pale green of new buds, bats weave through the still-bright sky. The air is heavy with the smell of crushed grass, threaded through with smoke. Somewhere someone's burning the wet, half-decomposed foliage of winter.
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page 29:
"'Sometimes,' Sam says, "I can't tell when you're lying.'
'I never lie,' I lie."
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page 31:
"On the way out to the car, Philip turns to me. 'How could you be so stupid?
I shrug, stung in spite of myself. 'I thought I grew out of it.'
Philip pulls out his key fob and presses the remote to unlock his Mercedes. I slide into the passenger side, brushing coffee cups off the seat and onto the floor mat, where crumpled printouts from MapQuest soak up any spilled liquid.
'I hope you mean sleepwalking,' Philip says, 'since you obviously didn't grow out of stupid.'"
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page 36:
"'That's because you're a romantic,' she said. 'Guys are romantic - no, really. Girls are pragmatic.'
'That's not true,' I told her, but sometimes, after we started dating, I wondered if she was right."
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page 37&38:
"'Can I come stay with you?' I ask. Barron's at Princeton, studying pre-law, which is pretty funny because he is a compulsive liar. He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it. I don't think he'll last half a minute in court before he'll make up something outrageous about his client.
'I'd have to ask my roommate,' he says. 'She's dating this ambassador, and he's always sending a car to take her to New York. She might not want more stress.'
Yeah, like that.
'Well, if she's not there a lot, maybe she won't mind. Otherwise, maybe I can do some couch surfing.' I lay it on thick. 'There's always the bus stop.'
'Why can't you stay with Philip?'
'He's farming me out to Grandad to clean the old house. He hasn't said so, but I don't think he wants me here.'
'Don't be paranoid,' Barron says. 'Philip wants you there. Of course he does.'
'Philip would have wanted Barron.
"When I was about seven, I used to follow a thirteen-year-old Philip around the house, pretending we were superheroes. He was the main hero and I was his sidekick, the Robin to his Batman. I kept pretending to be in trouble so he could come and save me. When I was in the old sandbox, it was a giant hourglass that would smother me. I was in the leaky baby pool being chased by sharks. I would call and call for him, but it was always Barron who finally came.
He was already Philip's real sidekick at ten, good for taking care of things that Philip was too busy for. Like me. I spent most of my childhood jealous of Barron. I wanted to be him, and I resented that he got to be him first.
That was before I realized I was never going to be him.
'Maybe I could just come for a few days.' I say.
'Sure, sure,' he says, but it's not a commitment. It's stalling. 'So, tell me what this crazy dream you had was. What made you go up on the root?'
I snort. 'A cat stole my tongue and I wanted to get it back.'
He laughs. 'Your brain is in a dark place. Next time, just let the tongue go, kid.'
I hate being called a kid, but I don't want to argue."
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page 39:
"I don't want to tell her that Philip probably doesn't want me alone in the house with her or his song because of Lila. Philip saw my face, saw the blood, got rid of the body. If I was him, I wouldn't want me here either."
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page 40:
"I might be a member of the family, but I am always going to be an outsider."
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page 42:
"She looks too thin. Her collarbones seem like knives threatening to slice through her skin. 'The music's so loud tonight. I'm afraid I won't be able to hear the baby.'
'Don't worry,' I say softly. 'He must be sleeping like - well, like a baby.' I smile, even though I know the joke's lame.
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page 43:
"'You're not a good liar. Philip's good, but not you.'
'Hey, ' I say, honestly offended. 'I am an excellent liar. I am the finest liar in the history of liars.'
'Liar,' she says, a slow smile spreading across her face. 'Why did your parents call you Cassel?'
I'm defeated and amused. 'Mom loved extravagant names. Dad insisted that his first son be named after him - Philip - but after that, she got to name Barron and me whatever fanciful thing she wanted. It she'd had her way, Philip would have been Jasper.'
She rolls her eyes. 'Come on. Are you sure they aren't from her family? Traditional names?'
'Who knows? It's all a mystery..."
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page 44:
Every kind of curse gives off some kind of blowback, but death curses kill a part of you. If you're lucky, it rots some of your fingers. If not, maybe it rots your lungs or heart. Every curse works the worker, my grandfather says.
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page 52:
"I sit down on the ripped cushion of our couch. I wonder what she thinks of the house and if she's going to say anything about it or about my grandfather. When I was a kid and brought friends over, I was defiantly proud of the chaos. I liked that I knew how to jump over the piles and shattered glass while they stumbled. Now it just seems like an ocean of crazy that I have no way to explain.
"I press my eyes shut hard, press my fingers over them until I see nothing but black. Until I push the images away. When I was Audrey's boyfriend, I thought by making her like me, by making her think I was like everyone else, I'd become like everyone else."
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page 53:
"She doesn't push me away. I consider kissing her right there on the dirty couch, but some instinct of self-preservation stops me. Once someone's hurt you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you from wanting them. Sometimes I actually think it makes the wanting worse."
"I imagine crushing her throat in my hands and am relieved to be horrified. I feel guilty when I think of killing girls, but it's the only way I know to test myself, to make sure that whatever terrible thing is inside of me isn't about to get out."
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page 69:
"'Good work, sweetie.' And I realized that the reason she had taken me instead of my brothers was just that I was the smallest, but it didn't bother me, because I also realized that I could be useful. That I didn't need to be a worker to be useful. That I could be good at things, better than they were, even.
That knowledge sang through my veins like adrenaline."
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page 70:
"I try not to rub my fingers against my jeans as I walk into the reception area and up to the desk.
The woman answering the phone has dyed red curls and glasses hanging around her neck on a beaded chain. I wonder if she made the chain herself; irrationally I associate crafting with friendliness."
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page 90:
"'The coast is clear,' he says. 'The eagle has flown the coop. The cow stands alone.'
I can't help smiling as I dig out the money from my pocket. ' You are a master of deception.'
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page 91:
"'I take back anything I might have implied to the contrary. Sam, you are a genius.'"
"All friendships are negotiations of power."
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page 93:
"I can't trust the people I care about not to hurt me. And I'm not sure I can trust myself not to hurt them, either.
Friendships suck."
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page 96:
"Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of the events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier."
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page 104:
"... Family is the most important thing. There is no one who will love you like your family."
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page 106:
"Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying. The only way to have absolutely no tells."
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page 119:
"My memories are full of shadows, and no amount of chasing them around my head seems to make them any more substantial."
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page 121&122:
"'Just like your brothers. You know what they used to say about boys like you? Clever as the devil and twice as pretty.'"
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page 142:
"I look up at the stars again. No one ever taught me the constellations, so to me they are all just bright dots. Chaos. No pattern at all. When I was a kid, I made up a constellation, but I couldn't find it a second time.
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page 146:
"'Well, it is. It was. It was mine.' I am confusing myself. I am forgetting the basics of lying. Keep it simple. The truth is complicated, which is why no one ever believes it over a halfway decent lie."
"'Am I not dressed rich enough?' Sam asks, leaning back so that we can appreciate the full glory of his suit. 'Don't be drinking the Haterade.'"
'You look crazy,' I say, shaking my head.
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page 154:
"Mom says that because she can make people feel what she wants them to, she knows how they think. She says that if I was liker her, I'd have the instinct too. Maybe being a worker tempts you to be all mystical, but I think mom knows about people because she watches faces very closely. There're these looks people get that last less than a second - micro-expressions, they call them, fleeting clues that reveal a lot more than we wish. I think my mother sees them without even noticing. I see them too.
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page 208:
"I walk downstairs, cradling my ribs half-unconsciously. I stumble. Nothing feels right. My skin doesn't fit. I am Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men have failed to put me back together again."
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page 229:
"'Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones.'"
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page 235&236:
"'Um, your brothers? They make people disappear. That's what they do."
'They kill people?' My voice comes out too loud. I don't know why I'm shocked. I know criminals do bad things, and I get that my brothers are criminals. I had just assumed that whatever Philip did for Anton was small time. Leg-breaking stuff.
Lila frowns at me and looks around the train, but even after my outburst no one seems interested in us. Her voice goes low, to practically a whisper, like she can make up for my mistake through overcompensation.
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page 236:
"'They've been using you as a human garbage disposal.' She makes a frame with her hands and looks at me through it. 'Portrait of a teenage assassin.'"
"We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That's why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder."
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page 237:
"But now the pile of corpses teeters above me, threatening to crash down and suffocate me with guilt.
All my life I wanted my brothers to trust me. To let me in on their secrets. I wanted them, Philip especially, to think of me as a worthy accomplice.
Even after they kicked the crap out of me, my instinct was to try and save them.
Now I just want revenge.
After all, I'm already a murderer. No one really expects a murderer to stop killing... I don't want to be a monster, but maybe it's too late to be anything else."
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page 292:
"The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true."
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page 299:
"'They say Friday,' he says. 'But they've already changed the date twice, so I don't know how seriously to take it. But I guess we should get a cake or something, in case. Worst case scenario: We eat the cake anyway.'
Memory is funny. Barron seems relaxed, like he really likes me, because he doesn't remember hating me. Or maybe he remembers the feeling of dislike but he assumes that he liked me more than he hated me. But I'm not relaxed. I can't stop remembering."
"'What do you think is the first thing she's going to do when she gets out?' I ask.
'Meddle,' he says, and laughs. 'What do you think? She's going to start trying to get everything to go the way she wants it to go. And we all better pray that's the way we want it to go too.'"
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page 309&310:
"The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks figure they're going to get a deal on a stolen handbag, then they get upset when the lining falls out. They think they're going to get front row tickets for next to nothing off a guy standing out in the rain, then they're surprised when the tickets are just pieces of wet paper.
Marks think they can get something from nothing.
Marks think they can get what they don't deserve and could never deserve.
Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad.
Marks think they're going to go home on night and have the girl they've loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back.
Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con."
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