Peter would probably throw a party if I stopped breathing.' 'Well,' he says, 'I would only go if there was cake.

It is a gift. You cannot earn it, or it ceases to be a gift.

Looking at her is like waking up.

She tries to turn too soon, and the ladder smacks into Fernando's shoulder. "Oh! Sorry, Nando." The jolt knocks his glasses askew. He smiles at Christina and takes the glasses off, shoving them into his pocket. "Nando?" I say to him. "I thought the Erudite didn't like nicknames?" "When a pretty girl calls you by a nickname," he says, "it is only logical to respond to it.

He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife?

Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.

That dot covers all the places we've ever been. You could cut that piece of land out of the ground and sing it into this ocean and no one would even notice. I feel that fear again, the fear of my own size. 'Right. So?' 'So? So everything I've ever worried about or said or done, how can it possibly matter?' He shakes his head. 'It doesn't.' 'Of course it does,' I say, 'All that land is filled with people, every one of them different, and the things they do to each other matter.