How we cite our quotes: (Story.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
All of the omens of the day, the swirl of swan feathers, the grave of dead grass, her grandmother's blade still rimed with the frost of the underworld, all her memories of warnings, they coalesced into a simple understanding: Deep in her veins ran the admonition never to eat fruit out of season. (1.3.71)
Even if Kizzy's never experienced any supernatural dangers in her own life, she carries her family's experiences with her. And all of those collective memories are making her Spidey-sense tingle here: Something nefarious is afoot.
Quote #2
The wicked in this part of the world endured rueful decades of early death, and the Fire burned hot and bright and remade them all, and they were all in their turn born back into the world as carp and macaques and salamanders and mosquitoes with no recollection of their human lives of the Fire that followed, but only faint memories of music, like wisps of a dream, from their last glimmering moments in Hell. (2.12.7)
When souls die and end up in Hell, they're just repurposed and put into new bodies with only the hint of a memory about where they came from and how they were forged. Estella is down for that kind of forgetting, though, especially after a lifetime of pain and loneliness.
Quote #3
Esmé's blood quickened as a shock of memories pulsed through her; a world of snow and spires; a milky mirror framed in jewels; the touch of warm lips on hers.
Esmé swayed on her feet. These weren't her memories. (3.P.3-4)
What's going on with Esmé's memories? It's bad enough waking up with one blue eye, but now she has to contend with all of these strange memories that don't belong to her.
Quote #4
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Fourteen years ago I escaped from them with you like a treasure inside of me. I used to be so afraid they'd find us, but I… I'd started to believe we were safe." (3.1.51)
Mab doesn't like to think of her past life as the Druj Queen's pet. She wants to concentrate on the fact that she escaped with her baby, and that she left the Druj world behind once and for all. There's no point dwelling on bad memories, right?
Quote #5
Love was theirs alone, and it was why Mihai had helped a red-haired girl escape from Tajbel fourteen years ago with her belly full of child, and why he waited alone in this gray city, year after year, his mind on fire with hope. (3.2.18)
Poor Mihai is totally sprung on the Druj Queen, or at least on the human woman that she used to be. He'll wait centuries if it means that she'll slowly regain her memories of her human past… and of how she used to love him.
Quote #6
She stared at him, at his fangs, at the lips that she knew from some alien tangle of memories. But it wasn't her memory! She had never kissed this creature. She had never kissed anyone! "No," she lied, shrinking away from him. "I don't know you!" (3.5.7)
Esmé is having a weird and confusing day. First she wakes up with a blue eye, then her mom insists that they go on the run, and now this demon dude has showed up and she remembers kissing him. What in the world is going on?
Quote #7
For some years during that bend in her life Mab thought she had discovered misery, but when she was older, she would look back wistfully on that time, because what came after made it seem sweet by comparison. (3.6.43)
Being kept in a cage and starved is harrowing for Mab, but in retrospect she finds that it was better than what was to come. Now that she's experienced having her body taken over by the Druj Queen, she remembers her early childhood as a (relatively) blissful time.
Quote #8
So when he stole Esmé away and Mab glimpsed the rough spires of Tajbel through his window of air, all the old agonies overwhelmed her and she screamed until she could scream no more, and then she collapsed onto the rug, rigid. She was seeing young limbs encircled by blue paint and hearing in her mind a song about ripening fruit. (3.8.28)
Poor Mab still hasn't gotten over the trauma of her time in Tajbel. When she glimpses the city again for the first time in fourteen years, she can't help but start screaming—it just brings back too many bad memories.
Quote #9
The sight of the cage thrust a spear of memory into Esmé's consciousness. It was only a glimpse, but for a split second she seemed to see long red hair spilling out through the bars, and small hands clutching at them from within. (3.9.23)
Sharing memories with the Druj Queen means that Esmé can remember parts of her mother's childhood and how she was kept in a cage. Maybe this will help her to understand Mab's nightmares and fears.
Quote #10
They forgot their humanity and they forgot the children who had been wrested from their arms. They forgot the drifting ash of their souls that were as dust upon the skin of the world.
The centuries passed. They lived and lived. They grew weary of immortality but remembered nothing else. (3.16.6-7)
The Druj can live forever, but since they don't get to remember anything that's actually important, they've forgotten all about their origins and their former loved ones. They're just left with this endless and pretty empty life.