Sir Topher finally looked up. “Because any hope beyond that, my boy, would be too much. I feared we would drown in it.” "Then I choose to drown,” Finnikin said. “In hope. Rather than float into nothing.

I watch Raffy as she removes the pickles from her hamburger and hands them over to Santangelo without them exchanging a word and I realize again there is more to that relationship than spelling bees and being enemies. These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking.

I'm sorry," he says, "for that time I kissed you at that party and for that time at the wedding and more than anything for the thousand times that I wanted to and didn't have the guts to.

Living is the challenge. Not dying. Dying is so easy. Sometimes it only takes ten seconds to die. But living? That can take you eighty years and you do something in that time.

Our bodies aren't strangers,' he said, his voice ragged. 'Our spirits aren't strangers'. He held her face in his hands. 'Tell me what part of me is stranger to you and I'll destroy that part of me.' And she wept to hear his words.

No," I say, looking up at Griggs. "It's actually because my heart belongs to someone else." And if I could bottle the look on his face, I'd keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.

I hope you're not smoking in front of her,' Lucia says to him. 'Yeah, I lie in bed and puff in her face, Lucia,' he says, irritated.