I'm not bossy - I just happen to be more capable than most everyone else.

Does anyone smell roasting meat?' said Razo, 'Oh, wait, it's just Geric's face.

You are my butterfly and refuse to set you free.

Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.

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.

His brothers could tease him about his height or the number of scars he was collecting on his body. He could take the joke when they said he would die having never won a fair wrestling match. But the topic of Bettin still smarted too much. He'd imagined being with her always. Now when he closed his eyes, he had trouble imagining anything else.

The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am.