Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.

Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.

I was glad when the invalids were executed

This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: This is like music or dancing but better than both.

And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.

That is what Alex is now: a shadow-boy