“I didn't want to die. I just found death soothing to think about.”

“No amount of wishing will bring back the dead.”

“If you'd only let me come by myself, none of this would have happened. Having you around makes everything worse.'She buried her head under her pillow. 'Stop it! you're so cold! You're heartless, yo...”

“What else could have happened? Car wouldn't start? House caught on fire? Escaped convict climbed through his bedroom window and tied him with duct tape? Poison eggnog? Or maybe I just didn't matter...”

“The students adore your father,' a perfumed woman said to me. 'Aren't you lucky to live with such a charming man!''He's even more charming at home,' Mom said. 'Isn't he, Bea? He rides a unicycle th...”

“I might have been made of metal once, but not anymore. Like Pinocchio, I'd turned into a real girl. So far it sucked. But there was nothing I could do about it.”

“But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hangingfrom the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the raindescending on black earth in early spring. ...”

“Life is but a dream for the dead.”

“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“But this time as soon as he moved she began to fade. He stopped at once, not breathing again, motionless, willing his eyes to see that she had stopped too. But she had not stopped. She was fading, ...”

“Nico knew something about ghosts. Letting them get inside your head was dangerous. He wanted to help Reyna, but since his own strategy was to deal with his problems alone, spurning anyone who tried...”

“It was all real and blazing with detail. But I was shadow, light as mist, mute as the wallpaper.”