“Arin, are you all right?""How?" He managed. "How did her arm break?""She fell of a ladder."He must have visibly relaxed, because his cousin raised her brows and looked ready to scold. "I imagined s...”

“I want to know everything about you." So he told her. The stars, too, seemed to listen.”

“Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."Her words silenced him, steadied him.Antecipation lifted within her like the fragance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the ke...”

“Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him. A band of nausea circled Arins throat, just as it had when she had a...”

“He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasnt time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin h...”

“You will be lonely, but you'll become strong.”

“He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.”

“He sharpened his flaws and disappointments into daggers.”

“Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.”

“I know that the whole pointthe only pointis tofind the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse tolet them go.”

“No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.”

“The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart”

“Its something of a clich, at least among war correspondents, that war makes people unusually horny; what it actually does is make you want to touch as much flesh as you can get your hands on.”

“People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?”