“Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.”

—  M. K. Hobson, book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 17, “The Cockatrice” (p. 237)

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M. K. Hobson47
American writer 1969

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