1. “Rule the world with me, empress.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
2. “There will be no redemption. It is not me who is wrong. It’s everyone else.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
3. “With a head full of fantasies of how I’ll flay him alive after he outlives his use, I unzip my pilot coat.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
4. “You’re my polar star. I’ll go wherever you guide me.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
5. “A revolution is always a tragedy, a destructive force unleashed by those stripped of every last option for peace.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
6. “He should be the Iron King, and I should be the Iron Queen. Yet Iron Demon and Iron Widow is all they’ll let us be.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
7. “It’s hilarious. Men want us to badly for out bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
8. “What’s wrong?” I whisper against his lips. What is it with boys and hesitating to show me their chests?” – Xiran Jay Zhao
9. “Love isn’t some scarce resource to battle over. Love can be infinite, as much as your heart can open.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
10. “You’d better not be tangled up in a love triangle.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
11. “You cling so hard to morality out of a desperation for others to like you. You think they’d stop treating you like an outsider if you were a good boy who did everything they wanted. This is your greatest weakness. If you want any true power over your life, you must stop caring so much about what others think.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
12. “How many aspects of the piloting system – and the world in general – are based on sterile facts, and how many are just illusions? Illusions that reinforce themselves generation after generation, because people don’t question the convenient boxes they’re penned into, the arbitrary rules they live by?” – Xiran Jay Zhao
13. “Some people have learned the unfortunate lesson that causing pain to others alleviates their own. But maybe they truly haven’t been taught anything else. Maybe they can change, if given the opportunity. A little compassion goes a long way.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
14. “It takes a monster to slay a monster.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
15. “How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey. You tell them over and over, until it’s the only truth they’re capable of living.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
16. “You’ve been living in a dream for long enough! Welcome to your nightmare!” – Xiran Jay Zhao
17. “Besides, don’t you know basic geometry, Strategist Sima?” I make a triangle with my fingers and look through it. “A triangle is the strongest shape.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
18. “When I break the kiss, I thread my fingers through the pulled-back portion of his hair and touch my forehead to his. Warm breaths gust and swirl between our faces.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
19. “What I have learned through this madness is that you can absolutely solve your problems by throwing money at them. If you can’t, you probably don’t have enough money for that particular problem.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
20. “This world can make monsters out of anyone.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
21. “Maybe, if things were different, I could get used to this. Being cradled in his warmth and light. Being cherished. Being loved. But I have no faith in love. Love cannot save me. I choose vengeance.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
22. “People aren’t interested in facts; they’ll believe the spin on a story that best reinforces their existing opinions.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
23. “Yet I love the power it’s given me, a power that lies in being underestimated, in wearing assumptions as a disguise.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
24. “My murder boy, my sweet boy.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
25. “You can’t shoot me; I’m rich!” Yizhi slips through the opening created.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
26. “Maybe I don’t know everything I think I do. Everyone lives in a different world. So much of the time, people make decisions they don’t want to.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
27. “The bloodlust in his eyes rouses something primal and deep-rooted inside me, something that finds it so… – Xiran Jay Zhao
28. “Never hesitate to carry out your heart’s will while you have the opportunity.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
29. “The entitled assholes of the world are sustained by girls who forgive too easily.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
30. “But a mother who has failed me so thoroughly is no mother of mine.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
31. “Perks of refusing to play by the rules: you don’t have to choose between the boy who’d torture a man to death with you and the boy who welcomes you back with pastries.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
32. “When you cherish someone for how amazing they are, you don’t pluck them from their roots just to watch them wither in your hands.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
33. “True love comes from synergy and trust, not merely chemistry.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
34. “Is this the real reason she urged me to make up with my family? So they could be used to control me? I can’t believe I’ve done the one thing I’ve raged at everyone else for doing: underestimating a woman.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
35. “You’re my polar star. I’ll go wherever you guide me.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
36. “I’m a prisoner in this world, in this era, in this room, in this body. It never ends. It will never end.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
37. “Men wants us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
38. “I don’t care how indebted I am to the elders or to the gods. If they don’t respect me just because I’m from the “wrong” half of the population, I’m not respecting them back.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
39. “He will not kill me. He does not get to make me a statistic.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
40. “After all, a society that takes care of its own does not produce children who grow up dreaming of burning it down” – Xiran Jay Zhao
41. “We can’t afford to simply go along with the flow of life, because nothing in this world has been created, built, or set up in our favor. If we want something, we have to push back against everything around us and take it by force.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
42. “But I have no faith in love. Love cannot save me. – Xiran Jay Zhao
43. “Just holds me, bobbing in midair, in the unthinkable distance between heaven and earth that humans are not supposed to reach.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
44. “I am what the worst kind of hope looks like.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
45. “Since the day I was born, the world had told me I must accept whatever woth men assign me. And maybe, despite my nonstop rebellion, I did. They told me to choose between accepting their doctrine or dying, and I did. I chose death. It was the surrender that made me fearless.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
46. “Shame and humiliation are self-imposed emotions, and from here on out, I choose not to feel them.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
47. “So many attempts to stop me from existing comfortably in my own skin, yet here I am, doing what I want with a boy nobody appointed to me. And it’s not dirtying me. It will not ruin me. It is not obscene, filthy, or shameful.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
48. “Everyone lives in a different world. So much of the time, people make decisions they don’t want to.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
49. “It is always ethical to rob the wealthy.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
50. “I’ve been told endless lies since I was born. That I was not kind enough, considerate enough, humble enough, honorable enough, pretty enough, pleasing enough. And if I failed to meet the needs of those around me, I did not deserve to live. – Xiran Jay Zhao
51. “Rise against the profitizers. Rise against the corrupt. Rise against those who have everything in the name of those who have nothing. Rise, rise, rise, rise!” – Xiran Jay Zhao
52. “The world does not deserve my respect. It is not worthy of my kindness or compassion.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
53. “Despite the endless horrors that we’ve both been through, I really am grateful that we survived to meet each other.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
54. “This isn’t his victory. This is my temporary mercy.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
55. “This is my admittedly graceless strategy: annihilate every center of power, so everything will collapse into chaos and people will have no choice but to obey the new most powerful thing – me.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
56. “I am always prepared to be disappointed by a man.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
57. “You cannot appease someone into loving or respecting you.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
58. “Never appease. No one’s ever been respected for appeasing. The only thing you did was let them know there are no consequences to treating you like trash.” – Xiran Jay Zhao
59. “You’re my polar star. I’ll go wherever you guide me.” – Xiran Jay Zhao