He knows no other way but ugliness,” Sir Topher said quietly. “He was taught no other lessons but those of force. His teachers have been scum who live by their own rules. No one has ever taught him otherwise.” “Am I to forgive?” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “No,” he said sadly. “Pity him. Or give him new rules. Or put him down like a wild animal before he becomes a monster who destroys everything he encounters.

They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke. Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.

A kiss is the prize?’ he asked sadly. ‘Even more than giving me the rest of you? It should be the other way round, Princess. In the real world, it's called courting. You let a lad kiss you and then you offer him more.’ ‘Let me tell you something, Olivier,’ she said with tears of sorrow in her eyes, ‘this is my real world.

I didn't realize until those few days how much a hug meant. To have someone hold you could be the greatest medicine of all.

I don't despise you for what you allowed to happen to me. I despise you because when I was released, you refused to be found and I needed you more than anything in my life. Not to mend my broken bones, Arjuro. I needed my brother to mend my broken spirit.

And when you'd finished running you'd be thousands of miles away from people who love you and your problem would still be there except you'd have nobody to help you.

Even five minutes of your time can make someone's day.