Human reason can excuse any evil.

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.

He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?" "I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son." "You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns." "You can stay here if you want," I say. "Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run." "I don't expect anything more." He is a strange sort of person.

They try to make you think they care about what you do but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you won't pose a threat to them.

It isn’t right to wish pain on other people just because they hurt me first.

People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.

Sometimes I see him as just another person, and sometimes I feel the sight of him in my gut, like a deep ache.