Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another.

It was the price of survival. The cost of his people's last, desperate gamble: To rid his new home of humanity, he had to become human. And being human, he had to overcome his humanity.

How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care!

The monstrous act by definition demands a monster.

I stare at her. I've always known that it's impossible to argue with Belinda, not because she's particularly good at it, but because she's so bad at it- that there is no common ground to work from. She simply sees the world she wants to see it and no amount of logic can change her mind.

Some things you can never leave behind. They don't belong to the past. They belong to you.

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.