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.

in her dreams, blood tasted like fizzy strawberry soda. If you drank it too fast, you got brain freeze. When she was older, after she'd licked a cut on her finger, the taste of that became the taste in her dreams: copper and tears.

At the end of a criminal’s life, it’s always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left. I’ve heard Grandad’s war stories a thousand times. How they finally got Mo. How Mandy almost got away. How Charlie fell. Birth to grave, we know it’ll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.

Isn't every hero aware of all the terrible reason they did those good deeds?" Aware of every mistake they ever made and how good people got hurt because of their decisions? Don't they recall the moments they weren't heroic at all? The moments where their heroism led to more deaths than deliberate villainy ever could?

She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.

Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings.