"And won't he grow up to be the healthiest of young men, all because she kept him safe? Ready for the world. Ready to one day conquer it. To travel. Get on a train. Go to work. Get blown out of her life.Maybe she should be having that glass of wine and cigarette after all."

"How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?"

"The gods whispered to you once, Finnikin. And you listened. But they are proud and refuse to speak to those who do not believe that there is something out there mightier than the minds and intellect of mortals."

"Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That's all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on."

"Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there."

"Imagine the state of one's mind if they were to recall its details. All those months cocooned and then the onslaught of this ugly world. Lights and noise and strangeness. It's no wonder we scream with terror at our birth."

"But grieving people are selfish. They won't let you comfort them and they say you don't understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you've been functional to them."

"But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for."

"Hannah, do you think that your mum and dad and Tate's mum and dad and my mum and dad and Webb and Tate are all together someplace?' she asks earnestly. I look at Hannah, waiting for the answer. And then she smiles. Webb once said that a Narnie smile was a revelation and, at this moment, I need a revelation. And I get one. 'I wonder,' Hannah says."

"Are you an idiot, or an idiot?' Gargarin hissed.'The first one. I really resent being called the second."

"City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure."

"Promise me you'll never stop dreaming."

"Then I choose to drown. In hope. Rather than float into nothing."

"If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she'd never ever be able to operate like a normal person again."

"When a woman has not received much flattery in her life, she will be seduced."

"He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine."

"For reasons he couldn't understand a sadness came over him and it was then he saw the girl standing on the other side of the dirt road, her eyes pools of absolute sorrow, her light brown hair glowing in the splinters of sunlight that forced their way through the trees."

"Today this courtyard was filled with great warriors. What is more? But it was not filled with great men who have the heart to rule a kingdom. Any man can kill, Finnikin. It is a stroke, an action with one's hand. But not every man knows how to lead."

"Sometimes you don't let us talk about how we're feeling. If we feel scared, you say, 'Nothing to worry about, guys,' but that doesn't make it go away. It makes it grow."

"But then Froi looked back to where his work lay unfinished and it made him sad because there had been something about the touch of earth in his hands that made him feel worthwhile."

"I never thought meeting you would be this boring. I thought we'd put our Italian emotion into gear and scream the place down. I never expected indifference."

"It's not as if he's good-looking, because he's not. Sometimes he's so plain that he looks bland. But it's his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. I listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. The worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter."

"Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian's mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat of fleece and to hear its safe sounds."

"In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we're fortunate, we still manage to have a good life."

"It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love."

"The string slices into the skin of his fingers and no matter how tough the calluses, it tears. But this beat is fast and even though his joints are aching, his arm's out of control like it has a mind of its own and the sweat tat drenches his hair and face seems to smother him, but nothing's going to stop Tom. He;s aiming for oblivion."

"Play me something that makes me feel;This soul inside me is made of steel.Brain is breathing, but heart's not beatingAnd, babe, I need you to make things real.Walk inside me without silence,Kill the past and change the tense.Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring;Take me places that make more sense."

"And we all end up where we started."

"You can't go around feeling too much."

"How unladylike of you to mention such a thing."

"Some of us weren't born for rewards, Froi. We were born for sacrifices."

"Worse still, he doesn't know how to follow the piper anymore because it's a path Tom has lost faith in.And the piper knows it. Tom can see it in his father's eyes now. And the more he stares, the clearer it becomes."

"At times it's like sadness has planted itself on her face, refusing to leave, an overwhelming sadness, and sometimes I see despair there, too."

"This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating."

"She knows that feeling too. Of believing that each time someone says her name, it's to tell her that something bad has happened."

"God knows what possessed me, but having that science book in my hand propelled me to immediate action. So I hit her with it."

"Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?"

"But Froi looked around with wonder. As if he had never seen the world from up so high before."

"Was. What does was actually mean? The verb to be. Past tense of is. Does it mean that someone is no longer being?"

"We're not eight kingdoms, but an entire land with one heartbeat. It's why people like you and I need to record our people's stories so we can find those moments when our paths cross, and only then will we know true peace."

"Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us."

"I hope you're not smoking in front of her,' Lucia says to him.'Yeah, I lie in bed and puff in her face, Lucia,' he says, irritated."

"I need voices of reason and of hysteria and of empathy. I need to have an Alanis moment. I need advice from Elizabeth Bennett. I need Tim Tams and comfort food."

"The people I'm stuck with in my life now aren't sucking the life out of me, they just suck."

"She and me? We the same in some fings. We live. The others, those orphan kids, they dead. Because she and me, we want to live and we do anyfing to make that happen. That's the difference between us and the others."

"He just watched the way Finnikin's hands rested on Evanjalin's neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself."

"I remember passion."

"I trace his face with my fingers, 'Let me see. A guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn't for me and then drives seven hours straight, without whingeing once, on a wild-goose chase in search of my mother with absolutely no clue where to start. He is, in all probability, going to get court-martialled because of me, has put up with my moodiness all day long, and knows exactly what to order me for breakfast. It doesn't get any more romantic than that, Jonah."

"Maybe memories should be left the way they are."

"One of Sir Topher's rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind."