They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning. (pg. 241)

Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?" She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance. Instead, he kissed her.

The familiar was usually invisible; how many people really noticed everything they saw?

But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.

Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.

We all have our fictions, little lies we tell ourselves to keep going from one day to the next.

There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity. Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.