James often wondered at the chain of flukes it must have taken to bring him through with his own life and limbs intact. Once he might have believed it to be the work of Providence but it seemed to him now that to thank God for his life would be to suggest God had shrugged off all the others flicked them away like cigarette butts by the thousands and that seemed like abominable conceit. James Dorsey took no credit for being alive. His higher power these days was Chance.

War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning.

Everything lined up. It has been easy, as if it were meant-" "Meant!" she said, amazed. She spun to face him, which, in the crush, brought her against his chest as if they were still dancing. She fought backward for space. As if what were meant?" "You," he said. "And me.

Was there any fate more bitter than to get what you long for most, when it's too late?

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

When a street musician lowered his violin to inquire, 'Hey lovely, what you got there?' she said, 'Musicians who ask questions,' and kept on dragging.

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-