I hate being the only mortal in a gathering full of Immortals who think killing each other cleverly is the height of good manners.

The look he gave her made her turn away for a moment. Sometimes you couldn’t look too closely at another person’s pain.

There wasn't a colloquial phrase, or curse, that went something like, "May your day be full of angry dragons" or, "May every dragon you meet today be pissed off." But, there should have been.

Lies were something you told other people to make things easier, somehow - hopefully, for them, but often more selfishly for yourself.

Is this some sort of test?" "Everything that doesn't kill you is." "Mind you," he added, "surviving doesn't always mean you passed.

It was true: hope could be unkind. You opened yourself up to the worst of wounds because you wanted to believe that something good could finally happen. But if you didn't? You missed this. This intense and prefect moment in which, while the world was almost literally going to hells all around you, hope and reality blended in a single, perfect note.

Truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.