Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have.

Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

The thing about hope is that it doesn't go away even when it serves no purpose.

I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.

And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.

Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.