This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love. A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off their tongues and the parents are concerned. Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, as they are when they are late to pay their taxes.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.

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.

Let me tell you something about dying: it's not as bad as they says. it's the coming-back-to-life part that hurts.

Despite the fact that Raven and Tack are often fighting, it's impossible to imagine one without the other. They are like two plants that have grown around each other - they strangle and squeeze and support at the same time.

I screamed until my voice dried up in my throat. We all did. All of us in Ward Six, all of us forgotten, left to rot.

When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.