"Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder."

"You gotta stand up and walk, Gem, he said quietly, turning his back on them. 'You have to walk out of here. Not just for them, but for yourself. Come on. You have to walk out of here on your own two feet. So I did."

"None of this is your fault,' I told him. 'None of it. You aren't responsible for what other people do, good or bad. Everyone is just making the choices they think will help them get by."

"Next time it'll be your nuts."

"Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins."

"What does the future look like?'A deep blue, fading into golds and reds-like fire on a horizon. Afterlight. It's a sky that wants you to guess if the sun is about to rise or set."

"You wanna go build some shelves with me?"

"Never, never, never. I am never going to forget you."

"Now isn t the time to change yourself to fit into the world... you should be changing the world to accept you. To let you exist as you are, without being cut open and damaged."

"You're missing the point. It's not that I believe in what Lee's saying; it's that I hope he's right. I really, really hope he's right, because what's the alternative?"

"What was the point of being holed up with someone who didn't believe in me when I had people out there who did?"

"Those rabbits stopped fighting the system, because it was easier to take the loss of freedom, to forget what it was like before the fence kept them in, than to be out there in the world struggling to find shelter and food. They had decided that the loss of some was worth the temporary comfort of many."

"Dressed as a man, her horse unencumbered by anything but the bare necessities, she had the look of a survivor, a fighter, and he respected the hell our of her for it, especially when she slid the pistol out of one of the saddlebags and aimed it at him."

"Home isn't four walls, it's the people you're with."

"She shows up everywhere, at any time, like she can guesswhat we're going to do before we do it.'The lady is good at what she does, Liam confirmed.'Can you please not compliment the person trying to drag our asses back to camp?"

"Who could be satisfied with seeking out the four corners of one small world, when there was the whole of time to be had?"

"I'm not... I'm not without a heart,' he heard Sophia say, her chin raised, eyes straight ahead. 'I'm not. I just don't have the luxury of being soft. I am trying to survive."

"Half-truths only added up to a whole lie."

"Oh my God, Green, I heard Chubs say from somewhere in the room. 'Just take the damn socksand put the kid out of his misery."

"And for the love of God, bitch, don't get stabbed this time!"

"This time should have been no different. But it was."

"Fire is calling my name. It is whispering words of encouragement, sweet things. It wants out, for me to fan the heat until it's a vortex that can't and won't be stopped."

"It's always easier to take something than work for it."

"Why are you so weird?'Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch.'At least what I do is considered an art form.'Yes, in ye olde medieal Europse you would've been quite the catch."

"Are you sure this isn't a nightmare? And that we won't just wake up?Yes.Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind."

"If I wasn't the same person I had been six years ago, how could I expect her to be?"

"Etta saw the way Sophia took a deep breathe, set her shoulders back, and moved with practiced grace on her way out - and she understood something about the other girl, truly understood for the first time. Sophia wanted it, when she was only ever sent out."

"I do not know what, in the end, makes a person who they are. If we`re all born one way, or if we only arrive there after as series of chioces. The bible claims that the wicked act on their own desires and impulses, because God is good, only good, and He would never compel a soul to wickedness. That I`m supposed to count on justice in the next life, even if I can`t have it in this one."

"What good is honour when greed eats away at its foundations?"

"I don't want to lose you-Then why are you the one that keeps letting go?"

"She imagined she could taste the storm in him, the battering winds of desperation and frustration that met her own, blow for blow."

"I was coming to see the heavier your heart got, the strongest you had to be to keep carrying it around."

"He said he'd never remarry, because he'd never find another lady that fit so neatly at his side. He called her his equal in spirit."

"How do you fight against a mountain? How do you move it when you don't even have a shovel? 'Maybe you don't have to move it, Etta said, folding the gown over the lid of the trunk. 'Maybe you have to climb it."