She wept for the hurt that he owned, a hurt she could never hope to remove.

Nix still held Benny's hand, and her grip tightened to an almost crushing force, grinding his hand bones together. It hurt, but Benny would rather have cut that hand off than take it back at that moment. If it would help Nix through this, he'd give her a pair of pliers and a vise so she could do a proper job.

But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace.

Courage is tricky, oily. Easy to drop, easy to misplace." "I thought that if you had courage you always had it.". . . "Lilah, nothing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.

Is he nuts?" "I think the expression used to be 'touched by God'." "So that would be a yes.

When Chong made to sit down next to her, Lilah drew her knife and stabbed the point into the earth between them. "I can see that you need some quiet time," he said and scuttled quickly away.

I’m not sure I could trust a man who would bypass an Oreo in favor of vanilla wafers. It’s a fundamental character flaw, possibly a sign of true evil.