“She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. Im going to miss you when I wake up, she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too r...”

“An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that it wasnt...”

“It was wrong to want to touch a scar and call it beautiful.”

“Someone was coming through the velvet.He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrels balconyclose, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet again...”

“She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?The powder was so fine that...”

“The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”

“The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.”

“Kestrel's cruel calculation appalled her. This was part of what had made her resist the military: the fact that she could make decisions like this, that she did have a mind for strategy, that peopl...”