The Top 10 Quotes We Love from The Blessed

​Our newest book, The Blessed by Remy Apepp, is out now! This dark literary fantasy is already getting great reviews:

​“[Apepp] does a fantastic job of keeping the tension throughout the story.” - Michael Alerich, Prism Review  (His full review gives a good, non-spoilery summary of the plot.)

“The Blessed . . . reached deep into my soul . . . wrecked me, healed me, made me feel seen and understood.” - Darcia Helle, Quiet Fury Books
 
Need a bit more convincing to dive into the heartbreakingly beautiful, richly developed world of this book? Then read our ten favorite quotes from The Blessed that we’ve compiled below!

​1. Illiaz was expressionless for a moment, and then slowly his lips curved. “For better or for worse, Lux,” he said, tilting his head as he regarded him, “our fates are intertwined. As long as one of us is alive, so must the other live. You won’t die for as long as you don’t kill me; I won’t strive to die for as long as you live.”
 

2. [Lux] felt suddenly skewed, disarranged, deranged, as if someone had savagely hacked the world into pieces and then haphazardly tossed it back together so that none of the edges matched up.

“Will I understand once my memories return?”

Illiaz shrugged and said, “Possibly. But possibly not.” He looked like a personification of moonlight garmented in swaths of night, but he smelled of living meat and fresh blood.  
 

3. [Lux] just wanted to be powerful. Powerful enough to protect what he cared about. That was all he’d ever wanted. That was why he’d trained and trained and trained, at the cost of everything else.
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But power always came with drawbacks. The loss of one’s humanity first and foremost.
 

4. “In order to accomplish anything great, you have to be willing to suffer pain. Pain as a reminder that you’re capable of dying can be terrifying if you don’t want to die—but the fact that you’re feeling pain means that you’re still alive, and therefore is far more a reason for hope and determination than one for misery and desolation.”
 

5. To live was to burn, and to die was for that burning to be extinguished. [Illiaz] could feel that flame of living eating its way along the short wick of his lifespan. . . .

In his mind was a lapping ocean of questions, and he wandered within the boundaries of his world looking for the answers. . . .

But was it enough to be a beautiful ornament? Was it meaning enough for existing just to cause people to smile when they looked at him? For them to feel like their hearts had taken flight and were soaring away with their breath?
 

6. “All that is beautiful is ephemeral, my dear Illiaz.”

“Then what isn’t? Ephemeral, I mean.”

He remembered the blue of her eyes turning away, her decorated eyelashes drifting sparkles like dust to her cheeks. He remembered the soft, resigned parting of her rose-painted lips.

“Only that which is terrible lingers despite the passage of time.”

. . . How badly he wanted to be terrible. But he was far too weak and far too deathly; all he could be was graceful, delicate like a flower. He was no burning sun like Luxanthus.
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And so he walked, pale and cold, and tried to make it look as if he were floating, beautiful and unearthly like the moon.
 

7. It had been a summer afternoon when Illiaz had asked him; Lux had just finished training in the dirt arena of the horse corral, and he’d walked over to where Illiaz had been watching, perched sitting on the fence. Lux had been resplendent and shining with all his gold adornments and all his drips and trails of sweat catching the sunlight so brightly he was almost blinding: cracks of lightning and crackles of stars in his skin, scintillations of sun. Bronze and tiger’s eye glimmering, like he wasn’t even alive, but something immortal and divine.
 

8. Sometimes things that were broken were more beautiful than they’d been whole, like shattered glass that glittered dazzlingly. Things that were dirty with neglect, though, were always ugly: those obvious signs of degradation. The acute reminder that everything that existed would have its end.
 

9. [Lux’s] body was made of stone, but his mind was wisps of fog. Maybe he was a mountain. Stretched between the earth and the clouds, high and far apart such that he couldn’t see from one end of himself to the other. 
 
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10. “I don’t think that denial is the best way to deal with it. Is pain not just information telling you that something isn’t right and needs to be fixed?”
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Illiaz’s smile was thin: not a supple flower, but a frangible twig. “Maybe some things can’t be fixed, Lux.”
 
 
. . . Hooked yet? Grab a copy here to see how all these quotes are tied together!
 
The Blessed is perfect for fans of Anne Rice books. It is part of the Tales from the Mythusian Empire series, which also includes Sand to Glass. These books are available in paperback, hardback, and e-book formats (including Kindle Unlimited) and can be read in any order.

Check out Remy's author interview for The Blessed here, our official book review of it here, and an interview with Lux and Illiaz here!

Other articles in our Top 10 Quotes series:
The Narrative
Bargaining Power
Hunter's Moon

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