I learned to share work with people even when it was in its rough stages without worrying that they'd be filled with scorn and hatred. After all, I can read their rough work without turning on them like a wildebeest.

What you said was true. we don't live or love in a vacuum. There are people around us who care about us who would be hurt, maybe destroyed if we let ourselves feel what we might want to feel.

Don't screech like that. You'll wake the dead.

One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.

Her hair was a damp mass of curls at the back of her neck, and Will looked away from her before he could remember what it felt like to put his hands through that hair and feel the strands wind about his fingers. It was easier at the Institute, with Jem and the others to distract him, to remember that Tessa was not his to recall that way. Here, feeling as if he were facing the world with her by his side--feeling that she was here for him instead of, quite sensibly, for the health of her own fiance--it was nearly impossible.

Are you the one with the blue eyes?" "Actually, my eyes are usually described as golden...and luminous.

There is more to someone being lovable than the way they look.