He leaned heavily on the desk now, as if danger had strengthened him before and its lack now made him weak.

A consciousness was like a face you saw once and forever recognized.

If we knew a person was going to die, we'd hold harder to the memories." Fire corrected him, in a whisper. "The good memories.

But you're better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn't humiliate me. It humbles me. But it doesn't humiliate me.

...you could not measure love on a scale of degrees, and now she understood that it was the same with pain. Pain might escalate upward and, just when you thought you'd reach your limit, begin to spread sideways, and spill out, and touch other people, and mix with their pain. And grow larger, but somehow less oppressive. She had thought herself trapped in a place outside the ordinary feeling lives of people; she had not noticed how many other people were trapped in that place with her.

Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful.

I love you," he said. "You're more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone else can be. And I've made you cry; and there I'll stop." She was crying, but not because of his words. It was because of a certainty she refused to consider while she sat before him.