His beauty did not blaze like Will's did in fierce colors and repressed fire, but it had its own muted perfection, the loveliness of snow falling against a silver gray sky.

It’s fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.

Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.

You speak of sacrifice, but it is not my sacrifice I offer. It is yours I ask of you," he went on. "I can offer you my life, but it is a short life; I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many more beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope that you will not care that I am being selfish in trying to make the rest of my life--whatever its length--happy, by spending it with you. I want to be married to you, Tessa. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life.

Magnus gazed dreamily in his direction. "You should leave him here. I could hang hats on him and things.

If there is a life after this one, he said, let me meet you in it, James Carstairs.

Filters are for cigarrettes and coffee," Simon muttered under his breath as they went inside. "Two things I could use right now, incidentally.