How we cite our quotes: (Story.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Kizzy hated it all, and she kind of hated herself too, by association. She hated mirrors, hated her ankles, hated her hair. She wanted to climb out of her life as if it were a seashell she could abandon on a shore and walk away from, barefoot. (1.1.5)
Poor Kizzy is going through the typical teenage period of utter self-loathing. There have been so many movies based on this exact experience.
Quote #2
The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. (1.P.3)
Goblins prey on the sort of girls who desperately want to be someone else, who want to escape their humdrum lives and experience real romance. It's obvious that Kizzy is one of these girls, which is why the goblins find her so tasty.
Quote #3
She drank too much coffee, smoked, had a thrilling singing voice when she could be persuaded to use it, and was saddled with a terrible nickname at school that she feared would follow her through life. (1.1.10)
Through her coffee-drinking and smoking, Kizzy is trying to form her image as the nonchalant school rebel, since she's never going to be accepted into the realm of the popular kids.
Quote #4
With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous. (1.3.2)
Now that Kizzy's finally been noticed by a hot boy, she feels as though she can start to shed her outer shell and maybe even become the person that she wants to be. To be clear, she wants to be interesting and dangerous instead of just another typical teenage girl.
Quote #5
[…] and the girl believed the servants. In that raucous palace of singing sisters, she lived her life butterfly-silent, never giving so much as a laugh out loud. When Vasudev spied on her in the garden, he saw a deep sadness in her, a dreamy wistfulness, but he never saw her test the curse, not even on a beetle or an ant. (2.3.5)
Anamique carries the weight of the world on her shoulders growing up because everyone sees her as the cursed girl. Instead of being allowed to live out a carefree childhood and adolescence, she always has to monitor herself to make sure that she doesn't slip up and make noise.
Quote #6
He didn't believe in magic and demons. He believed in day and night, endurance and fury, cold mud and loneliness and the speed with which blood leaves the body. He also believed in miserable, defiant hope and the way the shape of the girl you love can fill your arms like an eidolon when you dream about dancing with her.
But whether he believed it or not, his shadow was… missing. (2.8.29-30)
James prides himself on being a rational guy who doesn't believe in any of that supernatural nonsense, but now he's not so sure. After all, that old woman was able to pluck away his shadow like it was a physical object. How do you explain that?
Quote #7
The Fire took in souls and made them new, and Yama sleeved them into new bodies as he saw fit. Estella might be reborn as a tigress or a river dolphin or an ibex that could balance on tiptoe on a mountaintop. Or she might be born as a woman again, perhaps one who could have love all her life instead of only the memory of it. (2.11.9)
Estella isn't too worried about going into the Fire and losing all her memories of this lifetime. She's lived them for long enough, and she would like to start over again as something or someone else altogether.
Quote #8
Mab blinked. She stared at Esmé. She was still wild-eyed but the savagery slowly left her face and her fingers loosened on Esmé's shoulder and chin. Her chest heaving, she whispered thickly, "Esmé? Is it really only you? Are you certain?" (3.1.19)
Esmé is totally freaked out by the fact that Mab is treating her like she's someone else—like she's an imposter. But Mab knows that the Druj can enter into human bodies and take them over, and she's terrified that it's happened to Esmé.
Quote #9
From her earliest awareness, Mab understood that she was not Druj. She didn't have blue eyes and cold skin. She couldn't shift shape or fly, or slip suddenly invisible. She didn't know what she was, but she guessed she must be animal, like one of the cats that were everywhere in Tajbel, or like the forest creatures […]. (3.6.12)
Growing up as a pet that's kept in an actual cage makes it hard for Mab to exercise her individuality. In fact, she doesn't even know what kind of being she is—all she knows is that she's not a Druj like her captors.
Quote #10
In the weeks, months, and years that followed, Mab learned that she was even less than she had always thought. She wasn't animal. She was cithra. She was just something for the Queen to wear, like a robe, like a fur. (3.6.53)
Any personal identity that Mab has built up comes crashing down when the Druj Queen starts using her body as just another outfit to try on. How can she have any sense of self-importance when she's being tried on and tossed aside like an object?