Beasts and Beauty Quotes

“But triumph and disaster often ring the same.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales

“So the men of Bagha Purana did what men do when they're well beaten by a woman and can't find a way to fight fair. They pointed their fingers at her and screamed, Witch!”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“Goodness is no weapon against the possessed.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“You are not meant for heaven, says the Devil. Maybe it's because you love no one but yourself. Or maybe it's because you cultivate beauty instead of goodness. And don't use your father as an excuse. Plenty of people have worse fathers and have made something of their lives instead of acting hoity-toity and waiting for some prince to rescue them. Then again, your father is so noxious that I'm not surprised you wear the stench of his sins, like your mother did. Good woman on the surface, but to marry a man like your father... Well, that requires the kind of soul that ends in my clutches. I checked on her before I came. Somewhere in the fifth circle and on her way down. Still thinks she belongs in heaven, poor lass. Those kinds never fare well. The pain is twice as bad when you resist it. What I'm saying is that your soul is going to come to me one way or another like Mummy's did and like Daddy's will, so might as well play my game and try to snatch more time up here where you can keep pretending you're better than everyone else and your angels are guarding you. Do we have a deal? Lovely. Now tell me. What is my name?”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“So she sticks close to her father, and whenever he gives gold to her sisters for new dresses and boots, he also slips her some, which Mei uses to buy new books, while the rest she buries under a floorboard so she can one day live free of men entirely in a house of her own with a library two stories high and a garden where she can read.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales

“Get too used to glorious sunsets and it is easy to blame the sun for stealing the clouds' glory--but withhold the sun and there is nothing to see.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“Survival comes not in resistance to the game but in winning it.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“But leave beauty spurned too long and just wait; beauty turns to beast.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“There is nothing more attractive to a man than a girl who silently surrenders her power to him. It is what fairy tales are built upon. Girls who have to pass a test to win a man, tests of pain and suffering, trials of fire, while a man waits on the other side of the flames, yawning and scratching his belly, waiting for one to come through.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“But it is [the wolves'] song that stirs her--a dirge of self-pity, as if they cannot help themselves. They are prisoners of their nature.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“If only she could be content with diamonds and champagne. That's why she married him, after all, for the gowns and the boots and the fame, and these bounties of a princess still flowed plentifully to her. But pleasure is only a fleeting respite. With each morning that the prince looked happier and happier, rage fizzed in the contessa's heart, a craving to punish him for the happiness she hadn't given him permission to have. Soon, the contessa began to feel the stirrings of black magic, the calling of a witch, for what is a witch but a princess who no longer has a need for her prince.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“Or maybe I saw love where I wished it would be, says the witch. Projecting onto a man what I wished I could give to myself. Making him the answer to everything. Now that is REAL evil.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“Do you know why I am not human even though I can turn myself into one? Because merfolk like you and I live longer. At least three hundred years to a life, which is more than enough time for me to get my fill--right now I'm in a hedonistic phase; a few too many lobsters fricassees and caviar compotes--but then there will be new incarnations when I'm done playing what witch...a chanteuse...a professor...a spy named Madame X...But when all my reinventions are spent and three hundred years gone, I'l be tired and sated and there will be time to rest.,,”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“He slashes his claws across her cheek to mark her.
Then he starts to run...
So much relief as she hustles away. Not because she's free. Relief because she isn't beautiful anymore, her cheek carved up, thesign of a girl who strayed from the path. She can imagine her mother's and father's faces upon her return, first joy, then pity, for who would want such a girl--the town's offering, sent in sacrifice, sent in submission, but too willful to play the part. Bad girl, they'll whisper...”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“Then the door opens and a strange little man steps inside. He has a red glow to his skin, a black mustache, and a black hat. He walks all hunched up, with skinny legs and a lumpy bottom, as if he is hiding a tail inside his breeches. He sets dark eyes upon the girl and says: Hello Mathilde. Quite a trap you're in. Lucky for you, I can spin straw into gold. So let's play a game.
He smiles jagged little teeth that shine like pearls.
W-w-who are you? Mathilde asks.
But she already knows the answer.
He grabs his hat with long red claws and pops it off, revealing two pointy horns.
The Devil, of course, he says.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“No, no, we can't know his name, otherwise the Devil will have a story, a beginning and an end just like you or me, and Hell has no threat when it is staffed by commoners.
But the Devil also likes to flirt with his own destruction - just like those he recruits to his cause - so he makes it a point to torment the weakest and greediest and guiltiest of the lot in their worst moments of need and make them guess his name. Guess right and live. Fail and burn forever. All of them fail, of course. But it's in good fun! Give the damned a chance. Wink, wink.
There are a lot of sinning fools to choose from, and today, as he hunches over his river Styx, a churning, bubbling bath, each of the bubbles shows him a soul ready to be plucked from their time on earth and whisked down to eternal suffering. He can hear the screams of his choir now, millions strong, broiling in the dungeons beneath his river. Who will join his little chickies? He sings a song, because the Devil is an artist:

Fiddle dee dum, Fiddle dee dee,
Look at my bubbles, one two thee.
Who will play my game?
Who will guess my name?
Who will be the next to burn in flames?”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“Don't be tragic. You are a beautiful girl, and the point of beauty is to make people die for you. At the very least, tell me what qualities he has that make him husband material.
He is as handsome as the most perfect statue--
Which will fade with time and soon he will be bald, grumpy and fatter than me. Handsome is not enough.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“No one looked like her, which she'd thought didn't matter, since skin shouldn't matter. Who cares if others judged her for it? Those who saw her only for her skin were themselves blind.”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty

“The queen stews bat dust, snake tongue, and toad blood into a potion”
― Soman Chainani, Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales