Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

I know it's not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you're not the only one with troubles.

And I've found that since you can't electrify yourself like a fence, the next best thing is to have murderer's eyes.

As far back as she could remember, a phantom life had mocked her with its impenetrable “something else,” but now it was the opposite. Here, in the circle of Akiva's presence, even as they spoke of war and siege and enduring enmity, she felt herself being drawn into the warm absoluteness and rightness of him, like he was both place and person and, contrary to all reason, exactly where she was supposed to be.

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it's hurtling forward-toward what?

...something was starting to take shape, out of magic and will. Smoke and bone.

They were tower stairs, a tight corkscrew down. The spiraling descent made Karou dizzy: down, around, down, around, hypnotic, until it seemed as if she were caught in a purgatory of stairs and would go down like this forever.