Daughter of Smoke and Bone

“Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?

You tell me that battling with monsters has made me a monster? Doing business with devils, what has that made you?”

“Just tell me—” Akiva began, but Izîl cut him off.

“Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters? I’ve seen things, angel. There are guerrilla armies that make little boys kill their own families. Such acts rip out the soul and make space for beasts to grow inside. Armies need beasts, don’t they? Pet beasts, to do their terrible work! And the worst is, it’s almost impossible to retrieve a soul that has been ripped away. Almost.”

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such.

Izîl replied, “A man once said, ‘Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’

Akiva said, “I don’t need to ask him anything.”

“Ah, no? I see. A man once said, ‘All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.’ Mark Twain, you know.

“Oh, I know why,” said Izîl. “I wonder if you do.”

“I know my history.”

Izîl laughed. One cheek was pressed flat against the dome of the minaret, and his laugh came out as a wheeze. He said, “Like mold on books, grow myths on history. Maybe you should ask someone who was there, all those centuries ago. Maybe you should ask Razgut.”

Humanity, perhaps, that quality of benevolence that humans have, without irony, named after themselves.

Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day. It seemed like just another Monday, innocent but for its essential Mondayness, not to mention its Januaryness. It was cold, and it was dark—in the dead of winter the sun didn’t rise until eight—but it was also lovely. The falling snow and the early hour conspired to paint Prague ghostly, like a tintype photograph, all silver and haze

stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.