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

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.

Suicide to them is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

Valuing knowledge above all else results in a lust for power, and that leads men into dark and empty places.

Inquisitiveness is self-serving, Johanna. -Marcus Eaton

I love you," I say. I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don't know why I didn't say it when he could hear it. Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I think the scary thing was not saying it before it was too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me.

There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage - in controlling something, period.