Sometimes we don't know how afraid we are until we've reached a strange door and we don't know what will be on the other side.

I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.

She’s a commodity in a sea of broken girls.

Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.

There’s a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom.

Someday I'll tell you all of it," I say. "I'd like that," he says. "No," I say. "I promise you won't.

I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.