Ann Aguirre quotes:

If this is the last time, let me say it so you never forget. I will always love you, Deuce. No matter where souls go, mine will be looking for you, solnyshko moyo." "No. I want a promise instead. Promise you'll fight like you never have, so when the dying stops, you'll be on your feet looking for me here." "I swear.

I've tried to be inclusive in my '2B' series. Over the course of three books, I wrote African-American characters, a paraplegic character, gay and lesbian characters, a bisexual, Jewish heroine, a multiracial hero, Korean and Chinese-American characters, and a multiracial supporting character.

In 2007, I sold my first book, 'Grimspace.' It says it's SF on the spine. I believe it to be SF, though it's certainly written differently. I write in first person, present tense, and the protagonist is a woman with a woman's thoughts, feelings, and sexual desires.

More than most, I know the pain of surviving.

Because I love you.' It was easy to say it this time now that I understood what it meant. Then I quoted his own words back to him. 'Not just when it's easy. All the time.

My life experiences are different than the average person because I've spent the last 10 years living in Mexico. I generally don't know what's going on in America, and when I do visit for work, I'm often interrogated about my life choices by random strangers.

You could miss someone, but it did no good to fixate on loss. I wished I had the ready words of a Breeder or the ability to comfort with a soft touch. I didn't. Instead I had daggers and determination. That would have to do.

Caring too much could be dangerous; I saw that now. But the alternative was no better.

I remember when I was a kid, I could never find anything positive about chubby girls. If a girl was pudgy in books, she wasn't okay. She couldn't be happy or make friends unless she lost weight.

I've held my silence when I probably shouldn't have. But I was in the minority, a woman writing SF, and I was afraid of career backlash. I was afraid of being excluded or losing opportunities if I didn't play nice.

If so, I couldn't imagine how the opposite gender managed to get out of bed in the morning. They might be lovely to look at, but clear thinking wasn't their strong point.

I swept down the stairs to find Fade waiting for me at the bottom. His dark eyes widened, and for the first time since I'd known him, he was speechless. He stared up at me like I was everything he ever wanted.

I'm not sick, Deuce. You don't know your own charm." My charm? I hadn't been aware I had any. It must be the dress, I thought.

A good huntress respected her partners instincts, even if he was socially ignorant.

She carries chaos like an overcoat.

Too often, women are portrayed in two ways: as prizes to be won by men or as damsels in distress.

If there had been another female for him since we arrived in Salvation, I needed to cut off all her hair and beat her half to death. The strength of that impulse scared me, and I took a step back. Deuce the girl was every bit as vicious as the Huntress, it seemed

This is not a love story. It is my life, and as such, there is love, loss, war, death, and sacrifice. It's about things that needed to be done and choices made. I regret nothing.

Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn't, you died- or stopped growing - which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I would slide in and out of different roles until I discovered the one that fit me best. -Deuce, (183)

Because it takes more courage to heal the world's hurts than to inflict them.

This is the way we win over our enemies, not with bigger weapons, or faster ships, but with human courage, ingenuity, and sacrifice. Don't lose hope. We've faced the darkness before-it has nothing new to teach us. As we go about our lives, let us remember the example Dr. Navarro set for us. At the right time, anyone can be a hero.

A huntress never stabbed anything she didn't want to.

Just . . . love me, and let tomorrow look after itself.

His face held a certain impassivity; you see it in all waiters and valets. They might want to jam a knife through your left eye socket, but you'd never know it from their expression. Working retail, I've acquired a similar look myself.

People grew lazy. They knew too many blessings, and so lost the ability to appreciate what they had

Like most, I was a mix of good and bad, anger and protectiveness, kindness and pride. But right now, I had only strangled fear and the promise of revenge.

Maybe I was just one of those people who couldn't rest easy unless things went catastrophically wrong.

My skill didn't lie in planning battles, only in fighting them.

For I need this scar over my heart to remind me. Crazy as it sounds, if I can bear the wound on my body, it lessens what I must carry on my soul. How he knew that about me, I cannot fathom.

Vel once told me that the heart isn't like a cup of water. You can't drain it. It's more like an endless well, and the more you love, the more it pumps out.

Pull yourself together. People among the living still need your help, and I haven't given you permission to quit.

We're broken in complementary ways, thus rendering our damage comprehensible to each other.

Does changing for the better absolve you of all the wicked shit you did before?No. March fills my head like a warm glow. Instead you receive the twin delights of guilt and regret.

I'll always want him. Until every sun goes dark in every sky, until I am nothing more than long-forgotten cosmic dust, I will want him. And even then I suspect my particles will long for his.

I knew exactly how he felt because I had walked in his shoes, wary and distrustful, unable to believe anybody could care about me without asking for something in return.

He has to take me as I am, broken bits and all.

People are capable of incredible gallantry and terrible cruelty in situations of extreme duress. I tried to showcase that range in 'Enclave.'

I am a woman. I write SF. And it's not acceptable to treat me as anything less than an equal. I won't stand for it.

Sometimes the past needed to stay buried; it was the only way you could move on. And sometimes you had to dig it up, because that too was the only way.

I felt like the blonde in every horror movie who hears a noise in the basement and goes to investigate alone. Sometimes you smell the stupid all around you, but you step in it anyway.

If I ever win you," he said, anger bright in his pale eyes, "it will be because you want me more. Not because he's gone. I'm nobody's second best.

Time is fluid, so the moments where everything feels perfect pass in a wink, and those where you're on your knees in despair drag on like the death of a thousand cuts.

Sometimes I miss the old me.

Once exposed, a secret loses all its power.

Brown bird welcomes white wave. Wander no more, dear traveler.

I think my head's a minefield strewn with triggers, and maybe if I survive each explosion, what emerges from the wreckage will be me, really, truly me.

Love can make us do dreadful things.

Before he bent his head, I knew what he was going to do. Touch his lips to mine. Oh, and I wanted him to... I stilled, hardly daring to breathe. The old refrain of cant and shouldn't sank beneath the weight of new worlds like please and yes.

After people have gone, you forget their faults, and you recall the ideal more than the person.

Sometimes it felt as if all happiness came at a price. You could never, ever, have perfection. Life gave you beauty so you could bear the pain.

He would bear scars because of me, as I carried them for him.

Each love is unique. Special. Giving to one never takes away from another.

Heâ??s worth fighting for, but I wonâ??t change who I am for any man. No more than he should alter himself to suit me.

His reply offers infinite solace in a single word. Always.

I'm Sirantha Jax, and I have had enough.

Each time Stalker called you 'dove', I wanted to hit him. Because you're not a little gray bird... you're all the light in the world.

Don't worry he tells me tenderly. It doesn't matter who you've been, who you are, or who you become. I'm with you every step of the way.

It's only a sure defeat when you stop trying.

Sometimes you find your heroes in the unlikeliest places.

Iâ??m sick of asking questions everyone else already knows the answers to.

I wanted proof, not promises.

Sometimes when you meet someone, thereâ??s a click. I donâ??t believe in love at first sight but I believe in that click. Recognition.

Thereâ??s a reason I hate jigsaw puzzles. I donâ??t have the patience to find all the border pieces, especially when theyâ??re all the same shade of gray.

With a polite smile, I decided she was insane.

Most people werenâ??t aware enough to fear the things that could really hurt them.

With my partner beside me, I fear nothing, not even death.

You can live without me." "I don't want to." I feared a love like this - that made us incomplete without each other. It was beautiful but treacherous, like snow that looked white and pure and lovely from the safety of your window, but when you stepped out to touch the softness, the cold first stole your breath, and then your will to move, until you could just lay down in it and let the numbness take you. yet I didn't want to be without him either, so I didn't chide him for the statement.

Sometimes I could almost hate you because you don't understand how much you mean to me, how dark and empty I was before. Solnyshko moyo.

Not just when its easy. All the time.

For peace to take hold, one person must first stop fighting.

They say funerals are not for the dead but for the living. Those rites are what permit you to move on, so if you don't deal with the remains, you can never deal with the memories. That might be true; we may have walked in their dust down on Venice Minor, but it's not the same as a proper good-bye.

His lashes, fluttered like butterfly wings. "I could've made you happy, dove." "You did," I whispered

But it was like a dance across a field strewn with razors, and I bled with every step I took.

I think people can be trusted to know what makes them unhappy. Maybe we don't always know what we want exactly, but we can usually say what we don't with a fair amount of specificity.

But wishes were empty thoughts, cast down a dark hole. They didn't come true unless you worked for them. I'd learned that about the world, if nothing more.

But courage wasn't an absence of fear; it was fighting despite the knot in your stomach.

Then in the interest of full honesty, I really wish you'd kiss me right now.

Beautiful. And ugly. The world is always both.

I so enjoy it when people assume I'm stupid." "Not that, just very focused on killing.

Did he die well?" No, I thought. Nobody did. They just died.

What was the good of having such a fine home if you weren't willing to fight for it?

But the world moves on, even when you don't want it to, even when change feels like the end of everything. It never stops.

We stood back-to-back, blocking and striking in harmony; sometimes it felt like his arms and legs were an extension of me. I could count on him to keep them off me from behind.

He was the heat of a fire and the sweetness of the moon I'd only just met.

Every army has a beginning, no matter how humble.

My heart should be breaking, too, but there comes a point when youâ??re so inured to loss that you no longer feel the lash.

Men always want to be remembered whereas women realize that requires being dead.

He's never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme.

I never knew I had the power to hurt him, only that he possessed the power to hurt me.

I never belonged anywhere until I met you.