Thank you Lisa for hosting this great meme!

Welcome to Thursday Quotable! This feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotable is where my favorite lines will be, and you’re invited to join in!

“Medicine was my family’s trade,” Nadia continued. “My mother was a midwife and my father was a surgeon.” “Was?” Lynet asked gently. “They’re both dead now,” she said simply. “A fever.” “Oh, I—I’m sorry.” But Nadia just shook her head with a strained smile. “I don’t want to mourn their deaths anymore. I only want to honor their lives.” Lynet leaned forward. “How do you choose to honor them?” What she really wanted to ask was how anyone could honor the dead while still feeling alive. “I want to do what they did,” Nadia said at once, like she’d been ready for the question. “My father studied medicine in the South, before the university closed. He taught me what he learned before he died, but now that Queen Mina has reopened the university, I want to go there too, to walk the same halls that he did.”

Mina felt strangely smug about this, as if she and Lynet were keeping a secret together. She looked down at the girl beside her, the girl who had shown Mina nothing but warmth and acceptance since the moment they had met. Lynet was too young to know the prejudices of her fellow northerners, too innocent to see in Mina the sharp glint of her glass heart—and so in her innocence, she made Mina innocent as well.

As I think back, I probably would have made fun of me, too. It didn’t help that I liked math and science; they were my favorite subjects in school. I think I like math because it’s exact; I like when things add up. Numbers don’t play games or have moods or opinions.

“But what if your heart is wrong?” Kaylie asked. “I mean, come on, you have to admit the heart can be a little flaky. The heart told me I loved Timmy Tyson in first grade because he gave me a Valentine. But then I found out he also gave the exact same Valentine to Carey, Mindy, and Megan. I was crushed. My heart totally failed me on that one.”
Elsa let out a small laugh. “The same Valentine? Really?”
“Yes,” Kaylie said. “So not cool.”
“Not at all,” Elsa agreed. “But your heart didn’t fail you. The fact that you were heartbroken meant your heart worked. Your heart was just young and still in training, but every heartache teaches us something so that when the right person does come along, our hearts will be ready.”

I’d love to see some of your favorite quotes!