She knew what it felt like to tremble like that before touching someone -- desire so acute that it became despair.

You really dug your own grave,” he mutters. “And I’m going to bury you in it.” “Say that louder,” I tell him, under my breath. “I dare you.

I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.

Mine. The language of love is like that, possessive. That should be the first warning that it's not going to encourage anyone's betterment.

I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don't think I'm so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without ever really being aware of it--a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking. I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure when it will come.

You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.

She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.