"My artwork isn't evolving, it's deconstructing, and I don't know why."

"Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.-Sonia."

"Suddenly, Tara's accomplishment was clear. She had lined up allies among the school's various groups and got them all to work together for probably the first time in the school's history. She was like a master builder who could bend materials like stone and steel and clay to her will... except her materials were flesh and spirit."

"Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down."

"You're not actually falling for him, are you?" he asks her one day, on one of the rare occasions he can get her alone."I'll pretend you didn't just ask that," she tells him in disgust. But Connor has reasons to wonder."On that first night here, he offered you his blanket, and you accepted it," he points out."Only because I knew it would make him cold.""And when he offers you his food, you take it.""Because it means he goes hungry."It's coolly logical. Connor finds it amazing that she can put her emotions aside and be as calculating as Roland, beating him at his own game. Another reason for Connor to admire her."

"You tell your brother he's gonna pay for that car in silver."

"You can't imagine what it's like to be torn between darkness and light- to be a traitor no matter what move you make. If my grandmother and Marissa died tonight, it would be because I had stayed in the darkness too long, flirting with the idea of being Cedric's consigliere. If that happened, I could never live with myself- but if Cedric gave me the bite as he planned, I would be forced to live with it forever. That was the worst hell I could imagine."

"What's going on? I'm in the back car of a roller coaster at the top of the climb, with the front rows already giving themselves over to gravity. I can hear those front riders screaming and know my own scream is only seconds away. I'm at the moment you hear the landing gear of a plane grind loudly into place, in that instant before your rational mind tells you it's just the landing gear. I'm leaping off a cliff only to discover I can fly... and then realizing there's nowhere to land. Ever. That's what's going on."

"I'm going out to find her, to make things right, or atleast properly wrong."

"Respect doesn't come without a little resentment."

"Did you ever get the feeling that everything was too perfect? Like the moment was so good that something had to be wrong? Kind of like the way a fish sees that bright, shiny lure just before it chomps down and gets hauled out of water to become someone's lunch."

"Luck, however, is too dumb to remain consistent."

"Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two."

"I almost told her everything right then. I wanted to tell her about the Wolves, and how I was supposed to hate them, but when you spend your days with evil, some of it is bound to soak into your clothes, like cigar smoke in a closed room."

"Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement."

"You know," he said, his voice making me feel cold in spite of the heat, "this city can get ahold of you and pull you back no matter how hard you try to climb out. Like a grave."

"You can't change laws without first changing human nature... You can't change human nature without first changing the law."

"The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when 'should be' gets crushed by what is. Sometimes I think it would be easier to die than to face that, because 'what could have been' is much more highly regarded than 'what should have been.' Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug."

"Outside the rain finally began to fall, surging in fits and starts. "I love the way it rains here, he told her. "It reminds me that some forces of nature can never be entirely subdued. They are eternal, which is a far better thing to be than immortal."

"The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back."

"I'm evolving, is the thing; I'm a god becoming a constellation.''The constellations are mostly demigods,' I point out. 'And they didn't get to be constellations until after they died.'He laughs at that, and says, 'Death is a small sacrifice to become immortal."

"Mary believes she was put on earth to bring an end to the living world. Both Nick and Mikey just stared at her."What do you mean end? asked Mikey."End means end. Complete and total destruction. She wants to kill everyone and everything. She wants to bring down every building, burn every forest, empty every ocean of life. She wants to turn the earth into a dead planet ."

"Sometimes, Lev, I just want to smack you.""You already hit him with a car."

"It's kind of like religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith."

"I'm sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they're proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute. -Hayden Upchurch."

"It does, Tennyson, because there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There's a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you're on the wrong side of both lines."

"Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn't tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer."I think, said Nick, "they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don't they? I mean, when it's an accident or out of ignorance, or something.Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. "You're a lot smarter than you were back in the cage, Clarence said. "You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you're almost a person."Thanks . . . but 'almost' is still 'almost.'"Yeah, well, we're all almost something."

"Man, Grandma, what big hair you have.""The better to style with, my dear."

"I always take credit for my acts of cruelty. To do otherwise is cowardice."

"When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things."

"I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning."

"While it's five in the morning here, it's also five in the evening somewhere in China-proving that incompatible truths make perfect sense when seen with global perspective."

"Conner Lassiter. Scheduled to be unwound the 21st of November-until you went AWOL. You caused an accident that killed a bus driver, left dozens of others injured, and shut down an interstate highway for hours. Then, on top of it, you took a hostage AND shot a Juvey-cop with his own tranq gun."..."He's the Akron AWOL?!"

"It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right."

"The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end."

"Hole..." He grips Risa's hand tighter. "Hole, Risa, hole..." And she smiles "Yes, Connor," she says. "You're whole. You're finally whole."

"No true hero ever believes that they are one."

"The good Lord wouldn't have put it in your heart if it wasn't right."

"So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?"

"And so, as the mob backs away to give them space... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he'll never let them go."

"Do we exist because others perceive our existence, or is, indeed, our own affirmation enough?"

"First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you'll be a whole lot happier."

"On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars."

"It's always the lesser of two evils.''I don't see why there have to be any evils at all.'-Connor."

"The question wasn't whether or not I cared about him; the question was, how much? I'm glad Tennyson didn't ask that, because then I'd have to ask myself; and I already knew the answer. I cared far more than was safe."

"Don't you recognize me, Mary? It's your good friend Allie the Outcast - although it looks like you're the one who's the out-cast now." Then Allie realized something with far too much glee. "Now that you're here - alive and all - there's something I've wanted to do for a very long time."Then Allie reached back, curled her fleshie's right hand into a fist, and swung it toward Mary with all her might.This was one strong fleshie!The punch connected with Mary's eye so hard, that Mary's entire body spun around, and she collapsed into a leopard chair. Allie's knuckles hurt, but it was a good kind of pain."My eye!" wailed Mary. "Oh! My eye."

"She was deemed an unfit mother, in spite of the fact that she goes to the gym every day,' Hal once told me. . . .Beautiful people are often forgiven for many things--and maybe she's gotten through life that way, but I don't forgive her for anything--and I don't even know what awful things she's done other than showing a lack of parental fitness."

"Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy."

"With hardly any effort at all, she made me feel special. Just like all the other people she toyed with."

"The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe."