That your eyes are like bits of sky seen through the leaves. And that, like the rain washes the mud from the leaves, you... how did he say it? Oh, yes. That you wash the darkness from the world.

— Jessica Khoury

The noblest life is the one laid down for another.

— Jessica Khoury

There is no brightness without darkness. There is nobody without its shadow.

— Jessica Khoury

There's just one rule, just one basic law that everyone lives under : take control or be controlled.

— Jessica Khoury

The things that were once sweet to me are now bitter. The sun is not half so bright. The stars seem dimmer. All this wealth and luxury feels meaningless. All the world is in your shadow, Zahra. I cannot help but see you when I close my eyes.

— Jessica Khoury

The will of this boy thief flows in golden streams. It is the thread with which I weave, the colors with which I paint, the element with which I create.

— Jessica Khoury

They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. For these moral humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio's steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.

— Jessica Khoury

This is Rosana, the last queen of the Amulet Empire, back when my people ruled all the lands from the east to the west. She is something of a legend among us. Every queen aspires to learn from her mistakes.”“Her mistakes? Surely you mean her victories.”“What?” I frown at her. “Rosana was one of the greatest queens in the world. She ended the Mountain Wars, she routed Sanhezriyah the Mad, she—”“For a foreign serving girl, you are strangely well versed in Amulet history.”“I spent a lot of time in libraries as a girl.”“Were you there to dust the scrolls or read them?”“Surely Rosana’s victories outweigh her errors.”“The higher you rise, the farther you fall. For all her wisdom, Rosana was fooled by the jinni, believing it was her friend, and then it destroyed her. Ever since that day, my people have hunted the jinn. There is no creature more vicious and untrustworthy.”“This is not the story I heard,” I say softly. “My people tell it differently. That the jinni truly was a friend to Rosana but was forced to turn against her. That she had no choice.”“Surely I know how my own ancestress died,” returns the princess, a bit hotly. “Anyway, it was a long time ago, but we Amulets do not forget.

— Jessica Khoury

Time has a different meaning for me, and these events that seem so monumental at the moment will one day be nothing more than a line in a scroll. These humans are but letters to be inked into history. A hundred years from now, I will be free. I will have forgotten their names and faces, and the struggles they have will not matter. Time has a way of burying things, shifting like the desert and swallowing entire civilizations, erasing them from map and memory. Always, in the end, everything returns to dust.

— Jessica Khoury

To have thought that, with the right tests and the right lectures, I could be made into a cold-blooded, heartless killer. To have thought that I could ignore the beating of my own heart long enough to stop the beating of another's.

— Jessica Khoury