“I stare into the ruggedly handsome face, the eyes alight with a vast intelligence and that eerie, unearthly power. He's beautiful, so haunted with power it takes me a second to realize exactly what...”

“He places a hand on either side of the bar, locking me in. 'And why won't you admit it?' he asks. I'm so startled by his new, gentler tone that I hazard a glance. My breath catches in my throat. Ja...”

“I stare at the long, almost elegant thinness of the wrist bone jutting out from a heap of flesh and cloth. All that separates us, that poor woman and me, is an accident of birth.”

“He licks his lips as his head tilts down toward me. My body goes wild. Frissons of electricity travel up and down my spine as the True Born leans down. His voice is silk in my ear. 'You're not with...”

“What's a Laster? A dead man.”

“By your eighteenth birthday you're supposed to know. They're supposed to tell you. Splicer. True Born. Laster.”

“You matter.”

“It's taken me all this time, all this loss, to realize what really matters is now.”

“They filled our world with weapons aimed at foreheads and smiled as they shot 16 candles right through our future. They killed those strong enough to fight back and locked up the freaks who failed ...”

“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the suspension of disbelief and activity of the imagination that ...”

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

“If we can become still and open-minded we might all feel that unseen hand on our shoulder, letting us know we are not alone.”

“If we an become still and open-minded, we might all feel the unseen comforting hand on our shoulder letting us know we are not alone.”

“It was the sort of bone deep emotion that made him want to hold her tighter with one hand, and draw a sword against the world with the other.”