I think with world building, it's important to create a sense of culture even if it is just a fantasy, and the best way to do that is to look at a real human culture and see what makes it cohesive.

If only it were that easy to let go of hate. Just relax your face.

It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.

I want.." she said, knowing what she wanted, feeling pulled toward it, arching toward it, but hardly knowing how to say it.

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.

Skip meeting him? The butterflies, the pounding heart, the blushing? The part where you enter each other's magnetic fields for the first time, and it's like invisble lines of energy are drawing you together-

This, she thought, isn’t just for today. It’s for everything. For the heartache that still felt like a punch in the gut each time it struck, fresh as new, at unpredictable moments; for the smiling lies and the mental images she couldn’t shake; for the shame of having been so naive. For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.