But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important.

I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction.

What were they thinking? 'It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!

I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

I had it all wrong," he says. "Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn't. To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for.

He spreads his fingers over my heart, like he’s holding it, like it belongs to him, the hard-fought-for territory he’s won fair and square.

And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in the summertime. That is not the color of red at all.