“A world without pain, loss, betrayal, hate, death, loneliness? Impossible!”

“I won't die. I won't give those ghouls the pleasure. I'll live and grow strong. I'll escape, then hunt them down and make them suffer.”

“The pair smiled desperately at one another. And for the first time ever, despite the fact that everyone he knew - even the gods themselves - would condemn him for it, Jebel didn't think of Tel Hesa...”

“We cannot help where we are born or how we are raised," Tel Hesani said. "But we can reject the twisted beliefs of those around us if we need to. Our loved ones and elders don't always know what is...”

“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to thin...”

“Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.”

“I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air ...”