A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching-they are your family. And they were my heroes.

Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.

Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?" "The plan is insane," Ehren said. "YOU are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants.

I mean, we're all going to die. We know that on an intellectual level. We figure it out when we're still fairly young, and it scares us so badly that we convince ourselves we're immortal for more than a decade afterwards.

Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.

The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them.

Molly was committing dinner. . .