"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."

"Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder."

"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."

"I think my family has come a long way. The sad thing is that so many haven't. So many have stayed in their own little world. Some because they don't want to leave it, others because the world around them won't let them in."

"If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one's worth came from others."

"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?"

"It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It's what depression does to a person, it changes them completely."

"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."

"Phaedra of Alonso's death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage."

"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."

"But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I'm tired and the feeling that I've had for a while-that something is haunting me down-becomes all consuming and I'm frightened that one morning there will be not enough to keep me going."

"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 could hardly breathe at the though of his son and Quintana in Sorel with no one to protect them."

"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."

"It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn."

"Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted."

"There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few."

"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."

"The gods do make playthings of us. But it is we mortals who provide them with tools."

"Josie, life is not a Mills and Boon book. People fall out of love. People disappoint other people and they find it very hard to forgive."

"Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely."

"Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy."

"When one is silent, those around speak even more, my lord."

"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."

"I can't believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don't feel free. I feel like shit."

"It's against the rules of humanity to believe there is nothing we can do."

"Are you calling us pigs?' Froi asked, watching as Rafuel winced for the tenth time at the formality of Froi's Charyn.Rafuel thought for a moment and then nodded.'Actually yes, I am. Pig-like.'Froi turned back to Trevanion and Perri, who were discussing the need for longbow training in the rock village.'What is it?' Perri asked Froi.'He said we eat like pigs.'Trevanion and Perri thought about it for a moment and then went back to their conversation."

"It's like you have a plan and someone comes along and makes you want to change it all, but you still like your first plan, no matter how fantastic the second one makes you feel."

"His voice is deep and gravelly. I once heard one of the girls say that he had the voice of a sex god, but because I've never really heard what a sex god sounds like, I can't verify that."

"Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you.But no one does."

"A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we're still trying to fit in as ethnics and we're still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians."

"And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life."

"Do you love me?' he asked instead. 'Because if you don't, I'd wait until you did. I'd wait weeks and months and years."

"I've been waiting for you all night and day,' she said.Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of this Quintana waiting for him with excitement spoke to parts of him he believed to be dormant. And then she winked.'Did I do that right?' she asked. Her smile was lopsided and he saw a glimpse of the teeth.And Froi imagined that he would follow her to the ends of the earth."

"When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life.That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin.And this was her penance.Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead."

"He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted."