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“...when things are very beautiful and comfortable on the surface, it can be harder to see the ugliness underneath.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“She was a person made for the present, not the past. She couldn't afford to forget that.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“It amazed her, how once the unfamiliar became well-known you could never go back.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“If she left- when she left- Antarctica would be a memory, than a memory of a memory, and eventually it would just be a story. Pearl would be just a story, a swirl of remembered feelings, someone she'd talk about at bars to strangers who would become friends and then strangers again.

All these stories, what did they add up to?

A life?”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“She just wanted to take one step that belonged to her, make one move that she had independently decided to make, but at every turn it felt as if her strings were being pulled by unseen hands.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Her whole childhood, she'd devoured stories of children with dead and missing mothers, often easier to find than stories of children whose mothers were alive and well. The absence of a mother was a promise of adventure; mothers made things too safe, too comforting. Children with mothers didn't need to look outside their homes for affirmation of their supremacy in someone's story. They didn't need to write their own protagonism.

Esther remembered Cecily complaining about this when they'd watched The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Snow White, offended by the lack of loving birth mothers and the prevalence of monstrous stepmothers. She'd squeezed Esther tight and smeared her cheek with red kisses and said, 'This evil stepmother loves you very much.' But despite Cecily's love, which Esther had never doubted, she had already identified within herself the same motherless quality that drove Ariel to shore, Cinderella to the ball, Snow White into the forest. Her motherlessness was intrinsic to her sense of self, and her sense of self was all she had these many years alone.

What would it mean if her mother was alive? Not only alive, but aware of Esther and watching out for her, passing notes through magic mirrors and protecting her from afar, her own fairy godmother. What would it mean if her mother had not died, but left her?”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Later, as the sisters grew, Esther hyperfocused on their differences, but as a little kid she'd been far more hypnotised by their sameness. They both loved chewing lemon peels and watermelon rinds, loved pictures of goats but not actual goats, loved putting sand in their hair so they could scratch it out later, loved watching their parents slow-dance in the living room to Motown records. They loved the sound of the wind, the sound of breaking ice, the sound of coyotes calling on the mountain.

They disliked zippers, ham, the word 'milk', flute music, the gurgling sound of the refrigerator, Cecily's long weekends away, Abe's insistence on regular chess matches, and days with no clouds. They disliked the boxes of books that came to their door daily or were lugged home by their father, disliked their dusty lonesome smell and how they consumed Abe's attention. They disliked when their parents closed the bedroom door and fought in whispers. They hated the phrase 'half sister.' There had been no half about it.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“... every word and movement made with a heightened sense of surreality, as if she could reach out a hand and alter the fabric of the world. That's what killing was, wasn't it? To remove someone from existence was to rip a hole in what was real.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Killing had been added, suddenly, to the list of what she was capable of. It had gone from unthinkable to possible. Was this how people tipped over into darkness?”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“He'd never felt so passionately all-caps about another person as Pearl seemed to feel about Esther, and certainly no one had ever felt that way about him. He expected to be sad about this realisation and instead found that he was mostly curious. Maybe if he really did manage to get free of the Library once and for all, if he began to lead a life on his own terms, all-caps was a feeling he himself might someday find.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“But the mass itself had been so boring that even her fantasies of rescuing Jesus and giving him a tender, thorough sponge bath couldn't keep her awake.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“I fell in love with you first,' Cecily always said to Esther. 'Your father was a bonus.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“The ground was endless, white, receding. The station dollhouse-sized and then teacup-sized and then ant-sized and then gone.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Not used to visiting the houses of commoners, are we, Prince Nicholas?'

'I'm not a prince,' said Nicholas. 'Technically, I'm a very minor baron.'

'Excuse me, your majesty.'

'The correct honorific is my lord.'

'No,' said Esther. 'Not even as a joke.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Crystals of old honey on her body's tongue, long hardened, were loosening in the warmth of her spilling blood, turning from grain to syrup, a slow sweet hum of wings unfurling from deep within her and looping outward, solid and multitudinous, the comb in her chest and the workers in her veins, and the hive all around her.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“A sense of isolation so complete it was almost a sound, a grim buzz, the way she imagined magic sounded.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Promise me something,' she said.

'I'll promise you anything I can without lying to you again.'

Pearl nodded. 'If magic really does exist, and you really can erase my memory, and I let you do it- you have to promise to come find me again once you're safe. You have to promise me to tell me everything that happened, and tell me again about your parents, and the books. Fill in all the blanks. I don't want to forget forever. I want to know.' She took a shuddering breath. 'But I don't think I can handle knowing right now. Alone.'

Esther wanted this to be a promise she could keep. 'Yes,' she said. 'I promise.'

'Swear it to me,' said Pearl, extending her little finger, but instead Esther uncurled her other fingers and pressed a kiss to her palm.

'I swear it.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“There's one thing I don't want you to forget,' she said to Pearl. 'Even with your concussion. I don't want you to forget that I really care about you. More than I've cared about anyone in a long, long time. Whatever happens next... that isn't going to change.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“She had done this so many times: watched a twelve-month life recede below her as she flew away from it. A year felt so long unless it was all you had.”
― Emma Törzs

“Not used to visiting the houses of commoners, awe we, Prince Nicholas?'

'I'm not a prince,' said Nicholas. 'Technically, I'm a very minor baron.'

'Excuse me, your majesty.'

'The correct honorific is my lord.'

'No,' said Esther. 'Not even as a joke.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Even without understanding the words, her sister's voice hit Joanna like a hammer against glass. It was unchanged, that voice. It sounded like Joanna's childhood, sunlit and safe and gone.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“If this is the book I think it is... I'm relatively certain it's human.'

A hot, sour feeling rose in the back of Esther's throat. 'What do you mean, human?'

'I mean the thread looks like it could be a combination of hair and sinew. The glue is likely rendered collagen.' He pinched the cover between thumb and forefinger. 'The leather's probably human skin.'

'Okay,' Collins said, 'great, well, if you need me, I'll be outside screaming.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Her grief had felt so heavy and she had wanted to find somewhere to put it, a container big enough and strong enough and old enough to hold it.

She'd wanted to share it.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe