Mortals always want something more- they wish for money, but what they're really after is to be carefree. Power when what they really want is control. Beauty when they want love. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don't

I wanted to know what it was like to be a drug addict, and have an eating disorder, and have a loved one die, and fall in love. I saw my friends going through these things, I saw the world going through these things, and I needed to understand them. I needed to make sense of them. Books didn’t make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books, and it was books that showed me there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Knowledge does have a way of making you an outcast.

I became an ifrit to save the lives of my fellow jinn. What kind of life saver would I be if I let you sit here and wither away in paradise? Just an obstacle. Just an obstacle. I meet the ifrit's eyes. What happened to all your talk about birds and fish having nowhere to live? The ifrit shrugs. I suggest you start holding your breath, my friend, he says, then pushes through the hearing room doors.

My sister has the heart of an artist with a hatchet and an eye patch. And I, we both now know, have a heart that is undeniably, irreparably different.

Books didn't make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books.

How could I possibly try to pretend the sunlight doesn’t exist, now that it’s taken so much of me?