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

There are times when fear is not our enemy. There are times when fear is our truest, sometimes only, friend.

I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't.

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn't cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost. His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield. With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned. And ran.

Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.

Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it.

Maybe the last human being on Earth won't die of starvation or exposure or as a meal of wild animals. Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.