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Ava Reid Biography

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“You don't see yourself very clearly, Effy.' Preston shifted in his seat so that they were facing one another. 'Challenging me isn't pestering. I'm not always right. Sometimes I deserve to be challenged. And changing your mind isn't foolish. It just means you've learned something new. Everyone changes their mind sometimes, as they should, or else they're just, I don't know, stubborn and ignorant. Moving water is healthy; stagnant water is sickly. Tainted.”

“I meant what I told you before,' he said softly. 'I want to take care of you. When we get back to Caer-Isel, the horrible professors and the horrible students... I never want you to have to weather it all alone again.' Effy's throat tightened. 'They're cruel. They'll be cruel to you, too.' 'It doesn't matter. I'm not afraid to care about you, Effy.”

“What defines a romance? All scholars seem to converge on a single point: it is a story that must have a happy ending. And why is that? I say, it is because a romance is a belief in the impossible: that anything ends happily. For the only true end is death - and in this way, is romance not a rebuke of mortality? When love is here, I am not. When love is not, I am gone. Perhaps a romance is a story with no end at all; where the end is but a wardrobe with a false back, leading to stranger and more merciful words. From an epistemological theory of romance by Dr. Edmund Huber, collected in the Llyrian Journal of Literary Criticism, 199 AD”

“Preston?' she said. Her voice sounded strange: small, wondering. Almost hopeful. He glanced up. 'Yes?' 'Thank you.' 'For what?' 'For caring whether or not I die of sepsis,' she said. 'Oh,' he said. 'Well, you can never be too cautious. People have died in much more banal ways.' 'Thank you for giving me the chance to die of something interesting, then.' 'As long as you don't throw yourself out of any more moving cars.' There was a slight quiver on the left side of his mouth, as if he were trying not to smile. Behind his glasses, his eyes were solemn. 'There are far more interesting deaths out there.”

“If I have you it will be as a man has a woman, a husband his wife. Do you dream of Bogatyr Ivan when you kiss me? Do you wish I entered you while holding a wooden sword? I would not like any story to lie between us like a third body in our marriage bed. When I touch your breast I am touching the breast of Marlinchen Vashchenko, not a witch, not a swan-girl, not a flesh diviner, not a third daughter. Even I am not near lusty enough to satisfy five women at once.”

“I'm not happy to be the most interesting thing in Saltney, but regrettably, I can assure you that that is the case.' 'I don't know about that.' Effy thought of the shepherd, the stones in her pocket. She decided not to mention any of that. Instead she said. 'Not to wound your ego, but I saw some very interesting sheep dung on my way over here.”