Vicious
"Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse. —Joseph Brodsky"
"Be lost. Give up. give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found."
"He found their destruction incredibly soothing, a kind of meditation."
"All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective."
"It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other’s skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath."
"Victor wondered about lots of things. He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were all really as stupid as they seemed)."
"'We could be dead,' said Eli. 'That’s a risk everyone takes by living.'"
"The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t always scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words. 'I’ll go first.'"
"ExtraOrdinary. The word that started—ruined, changed—everything."
"Eli, who believed in God and had a monster inside just like Victor, but knew how to hide it better."
"The first was simple: to put as much distance as he could between himself and Eli before he did something he’d regret."
"Hell, we could be heroes."
"He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike, more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer. He wanted to see the look in Eli’s eyes when he lit them up with pain. He wanted his attention."
"The worst part of going numb was that it took away everything but this, the smothering need to hurt, to break, to kill, pouring over him like a thick blanket of syrup until he panicked and brought the physical sensations back."
"If Eli really was a hero, and Victor meant to stop him, did that make him a villain? He took a long sip of his drink, tipped his head back against the couch, and decided he could live with that."
"He wasn’t in the mood for God. Not this morning."
"'Maybe to a point, but when I climbed into that water, I put myself in His hands—' 'No,' snapped Victor. 'You put yourself in mine.'"
"The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequence."
"he felt was a kind of quiet joy, a vindication. He’d been right about Eli all along. Eli could preach all he liked about Victor being a devil in stolen skin, but the proof of Eli’s own evil was spread across the counter, on display."
"'There are no good men in this game,'"
"But these words people threw around—humans, monsters, heroes, villains—to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics."
"Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human."
"'It’s why I let you stay,' said Victor. 'Why I liked you. All that charm outside, all that evil inside. There was a monster under there, long before you died.'"
"'When no one understands, that’s usually a good sign that you’re wrong.'"