He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.

You can't dispute the ridiculous. You can't argue reasonably with evil.

That's why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.

That was the way illness appeared in a house, in the corners, in between floorboards, on the hooks in the closet, along with the sweaters and coats.

Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

He has the ability to catch someone by the way that he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking.