"Don't I deserve to finally be free of you?"

"It's never too soon to worry. Worry spurs preparation."

"She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx."

"And they were quiet but their blood and nerves and butterflies were not-they were rampantly alive, rushing and thrumming in a wild and perfect melody, matched note for note."

"Life doesn't need magic to be magical.(But a little bit sure doesn't hurt.)"

"Get out of doors, Strange. Breathe air, see things. A man should have squint lines from looking at the horizon, not just from reading in dim light."

"There was only present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn't drive us mad."

"Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony."

"It was the hate of the used and tormented, who are the children of the used and tormented, and whose own children will be used and tormented."

"Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She'd done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft as lynx fur. And of course there were her angel wings taking up one whole wall. But there was no help for the real emptiness; its close air was stirred by no breath but her own. When she was alone, the empty place within her, the missingness, as she thought of it, seemed to swell. Even being with Kaz had done something to keep it at bay, though not enough. Never enough."

"Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world."

"War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It's ugly, and you don't even want to look at it let alone hang it on the wall, but you have no choice, once you know. Once you really know."

"It was a different life out here, but make no mistake: Lazlo was every bit the dreamer he had always been, if not more. He might have left his books, but he carried all his stories with him."

"What's the point of being old if you can't beleaguer the young with your vast stores of wisdom?And what's the point of being young if you can't ignore all advice?"

"She may have been the one whose name meant music, but his sounded like it. Saying it made her want to sing it, to lean out a window and call him home. To whisper it in the dark."

"Vengeance ought to be spoken through gritted teeth, spittle flying, the cords of one's soul so entangled in it that you can't let it go, even if you try. If you feel it--if you really feel it--then you speak it like it's a still-beating heart clenched in your fist and there's blood running down your arm, dripping off your elbow, and you can't let go."

"Beautiful men and women with distorted shadows came and scorched their handprints onto doors before vanishing skyward, drafts of heat billowing behind them with the whumph of unseen wings. Here and there, feathers fell, and they were like tufts of white fire, disintegrating to ash as soon as they touched the ground."

"I am a link in a chain."

"And just so you know, the invaders are always the bad guys. Always."

"The function of hate, as Sarai saw it, was to stamp out compassion-to close a door in one's own self and forget it was ever there. If you had hate, then you could see suffering-and cause it-and feel nothing except perhaps a sordid vindication."

"I don't believe in prayer, but I do believe in magic, and I want to believe in miracles."

"What was he? Storyteller and secretary and doer of odd jobs, neither Tizerkane nor delegate, just someone along for the dream."

"His lips made a grim twist that was like the joyless cousin of a smile."

"I know it's not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you're not the only one with troubles."

"His shadow splayed out huge before him, and his mind gleamed with ancient wars and winged beings, a mountain of melted demon bones and the city on the far side of it--a city that had vanished in the mists of time."

"And... a bed. A bed and a blanket to cover them, a blanket that was theirs together."

"His hope was like an intake of icy air-it hurt-and just as sharp and sudden was his jealousy. In an instant he was hot and cold with it, his hands clenching into fists so tight they burned. A flare of adrenaline coursed through him and left him shaking, and it wasn't her. It wasn't her, and for the fleeting flash of an instant, he felt relief. Followed by crushing disappointment and self-loathing for what his reaction had been."

"To be one of a pair of bodies that knew that melting fusion. To reach and find. To be and reached for and found. To belong to a mutual certainty. To wake up holding hands."

"His eyes are blue, and blue eyes up close are a celestial phenomenon: nebulae as seen through telescopes, the light of unnamed stars diffused through dusts and elements and endlessness. Layers of light. Blue eyes are starlight."

"I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write."

"If only it were that easy to let go of hate. Just relax your face."

"Ignorance and power, they re a poor combination."

"I want to touch with my mouth. His mouth, with my mouth. Maybe his neck, too. But first things first: Make him aware I exist.It's possible that he is already aware, if only in a 'don't step on the small girl' kind of way."

"She wanted to be free, and if she could never be free, at least she wanted to be brave - brave enough not to sell herself, no matter what the payment, or the cost of refusing."

"He drifted about with his head full of myths, always at least half lost in some otherland of story. Demons and wingsmiths, seraphim and spirits, he love it all."

"If you're afraid of your own dreams, you're welcome here in mine."

"Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked."

"I can't imagine you give apologies, Ten had said before, and she'd been right, but Liraz thought that she would now, She would apologize for Savvath. If her voice was her own. If it wasn't reeling out of her, rising and falling in a sound that might have been laughter and might-if she weren't Liraz and it weren't unthinkable-have been sobbing.In truth, it was both. She was going to lose her arms, the clean way or the less clean, and here's where the laughter came in: It was horrific, and it was sadistic, and it was also, literally, a dream come true."

"He didn't believe in magic and demons. He believed in day and night, endurance and fury, cold mud and loneliness and the speed with which blood leaves the body."

"For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve-like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable."

"Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels."

"My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I've ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn't even know my face could do this. It's like there were hidden zippers in my cheeks. Jesus. This must be what feelings are. This is why people write poems! I get it now. I get it, and I want more."

"There was no echo, no reverberation. If anything the room ate sound. It swallowed her voice, her words, and her eternal, inadequate apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those."

"She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust."

"I feel liquefied, like a cucumber forgotten in the crisper drawer, and I want to hold myself at arm's length and carry me to the trash. Who is this sack of slush masquerading as me? It's intolerable."

"On the occasions that he did look up from the page, he would seem as though he were awakening from a dream."

"He danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped him like a rotten plum."

"I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it's all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes."

"Why not open the door, and open their arms, and close them again around each other? Did the not understand how, in the strange chemistry of human emotion, his suffering and her, mingled together, could... countervail each other?"

"In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn't stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have been the forced inversion of laughter-like a soul pulled inside out to reveal its rawest meats."