I have to spring a cat out of Rumelt Animal Shelter. Think of it as a prison break." It does the trick. He laughs. "Whose cat?" "My cat. What do you think? That I break out the cats of strangers?" "Let me guess, she was framed. She's innocent.

You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it.

There is nothing for her beyond those gates," Gavriel said. "Do you think to bring her along like a talisman to remind you of your humanity? Or do you think sharing your damnation will lighten the burden of it?

I survive at the edge of friends circles.

Occasionally, there are battles in the sky. One likes to imagine the angels are always triumphant. One does not like to think of the ancient and terrible scales balancing the infernal and divine as wobbling back and forth. Tilting freely, to and fro. One does not like to think that sometimes it is the angel that falls.

She says that what you did was a cry for help." "It was," I say. "That's why I was yelling 'Heeeelp!' I don't really go in for subtlety.

It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what’s left is all construct, all artifice.