“Love is a luxury.""No. Love is an element."An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on.”

“She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smi...”

“Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat...”

“It was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.”

“She'd spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened--apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a m...”

“I...I sang," she whispered, "if that matters," and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul in...”

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

“News told, rumors heard, truth implied, facts buried.”

“She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.”