✧ Beanie Reads ✧

“I tried to be a better person for her– but it was to impress her, to get her to want me. But when I’m around you, I want to be better because… well, because it feels right. Because I want to. You make me want to become something greater than myself. I want to excel. You inspire me in every act, every word, every glance. I look at you, and you’re like… like light made into flesh. […] You have no clue how beautiful you are or how brightly you shine.”
― Richelle Mead, The Golden Lily

“Wanting to be through with this quickly, I leaned forward and kissed him.
Almost. I lost my nerve halfway there, somewhere around the moment I noticed he had a freckle next to his eye and wondered ridiculously if that was something he would remove if I asked it of him, and instead of a proper kiss, I merely brushed my lips against his. It was a shadow of a kiss, cool and insubstantial, and I almost wish I could be romantic and say it was somehow transformative, but in truth, I barely felt it. But then his eyes came open, and he smiled at me with such innocent happiness that my ridiculous heart gave a leap and would have answered him instantly, if it was the organ in charge of my decision-making.
"Choose whenever you wish," he said. "No doubt you will first need to draw up a list of pros and cons, or perhaps a series of bar plots. If you like, I will help you organize them into categories."
I cleared my throat. "It strikes me that this is all pointless speculation. You cannot marry me. I am not going to be left behind, pining for you, when you return to your kingdom. I have no time for pining."
He gave me an astonished look. "Leave you behind! As if you would consent to that. I would expect to be burnt alive when next I returned to visit. No, Em, you will come with me, and we will rule my kingdom together. You will scheme and strategize until you have all my councillors eating out of your hand as easily as you do Poe, and I will show you everything---everything. We will travel to the darkest parts of my realm and back again, and you will find answers to questions you have never even thought to ask, and enough material to fill every journal and library with your discoveries.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“That's the one thing I've worked for my entire life -- to be someone who matters. That's why my parents moved to this country. That's my purpose. If I can't do it, then what's the point of anything? What's the point of me? What possible value could I provide?”
― Ann Liang, I Am Not Jessica Chen

“I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I'm just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me.”
― Ann Liang, This Time It's Real