My friends call me by my name." "You don't have any friends." "I don't want you to be my friend, Selia, or my servant, not now. I thought you were both. You have let me know I was wrong. So are you to treat me so. You are wrong.

Well do I remember the first night we met, how you questioned my opinion that first impressions are perfect. You were right to do so, of course, but even then I suspected what I've come to believe most passionately these past weeks: from that first moment, I knew you were a dangerous woman, and I was in great peril of falling in love." She thought she should say something witty here. She said, "Really?

The woman gestured to a seat and put on a patient face. An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween.

Her nightmare clung to her like the smell of smoke to cloth.

Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

I know they are naught things, but I devour novels.” (p. 57).

I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.