What are we fighting for? What are we killing for? What do you see when you look into the future?

...the air seeming to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place were a story about her.

Stars got tangled in her hair whenever she played in the sky.

Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?

Soon, everything else would come rushing at him. Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once - the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him - but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva only knew this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever. Karou was alive.

Love affair. Doesn't that sound so middle-aged? And also ill-fated. Like ill-fated is an understood prefix to love affair. Well, ill-fated is fine, as long as it's a meaty and fraught ill-fated love affair, not a pale and insipid one.

It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell.