Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.

There's a Spanish proverb," he said, "that's always fascinated me. "Take what you want and pay for it, says God.'" "I don't believe in God," Daniel said, "but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.

My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind...

I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking books up trees and reading there.

I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.

This girl: she bent reality around her like a lens bending light, she pleated it into so many flickering layers that you could never tell which one you were looking at, the longer you stared the dizzier you got.

When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them