He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of seperation removed.

You're mortal, and only a mortal can afford to be romantic. When we conquered death, we murdered love.

It's hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned for.

She looks at me out of the side of her uncovered eye. "Chess, Zombie: defending yourself from the move that hasn't happened yet. Does it matter that he doesn't light up through our eyepieces? That he missed us when he could have taken us own? If two possibilities are equally probable but mutually exclusive, which one matters the most? Which one do you bet your life on?

Is it any wonder the power this man held over me - this man who did not run from his demons like most of us do, but embraced them as his own, clutching them to his heart in a choke-hold grip. He did not try to escape them by denying them or drugging them or bargaining with them. He met them where they lived, in the secret place most of us keep hidden. Warthrop was Warthrop down to the marrow of his bones, for his demons defined him; they breathed the breath of life into him; and without them, he would go down, as most of us do, into the purgatorial fog of a life unrealized.

If the world breaks a million and one promises, can you trust the million and second?

Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.