We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.

Are you okay?" I (Cassie) call up to him. "Um. Define okay." (Ben) "Okay means you're not bleeding to death." "I'm okay.

Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think what you always thought, expect what you always expected

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.

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.

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all

And then Evan Walker kisses me.