Lauren DeStefano

“Good night, sweetheart," he says. "Good bye, sweetheart," I say. And it's so casual, so innocent that he doesn't suspect a thing.”

“And it only seems fitting that, in this moment of illusion, the words just come out of me. "I love you, too.”

“But you," "Sixteen is perfect. You can spend the rest of your lives together. He won't have to be alone.”

“When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.”

“It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls.""There are always walls." I say.”

“I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.”

“Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.”

“He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.”

“We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions”

“One afternoon, as Rose lay in a sweaty daze, teetering on the edge of consciousness, she made me swear that I would look after Linden, and I promised I would. I didn't expect to keep that promise, but maybe my,lie will at least do him some good in the meantime.”

“We're all born an empty page.”

“We writers are resilient souls.”

“Every word out of your mouth," he pants, "has been a lie, hasn't it?""No," I say softly. "Not everything.""What about your name?" he says. "Is your name even Rhine?”

“It's best not to wonder at what cost. Freedom is the only price to pay for anything in this place.”

“I love Cecily", "whether or not you believe it. Not in the same way I loved Rose, or you. But what should that matter? I've loved all my wives differently.”

“I think, in this strange world of beautiful things, there may be some humanity after all.”

“The sullen boy sitting before me is not my husband, and the girl he is fretting over isn't me, will never be me.”

“You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.”

“I'm going to call you Rose," he says with resolution, working the back off an old clock.”

“Things will get worse before they get better.”

“Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.”

“Life is much different from the days when there were lilies in my mother’s garden, and all my secrets fit into a paper cup.”

“Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.”

“Y está tan cerca de mí, que siento su aliento cálido y dulce, y lo único que sé es que cuando aspira el aire, quiero que me absorba a mí también con él.”

“I open my mouth to, I don't know, apologize again maybe. But he takes my face in his hands and presses his forehead to mine. And he's so close that I can feel his little warm breaths, and all I know is that when he draws his next breath, I want to get sucked in.Our lips touched, almost as soft as not touching at all. Then they press closer to each other, draw back uncertainly, touch again. There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.”

“I figured it out eventually," she says. She's sitting on the edge of the gurney again; her features slowly materialize as my vision clears. "It's momentum.""What?" I whisper. The feeling returning to my lips, spreading out to my fingertips and toes."Momentum," she repeats. "You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.”

“I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.”

“There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.”

“And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.”

“Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free."He laughs.”

“I've done it all before, I tell myself, and I can do it again. Trust is the strongest weapon.”

“I used to have only one name; it used to mean something.”

“Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.”

“I lost everyone I loved," I tell him. I wait for him to look at me, and then I add, "The day I met you.”

“I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.”

“She's beautiful and graceful, and she is very compassionate and loyal when you aren't responsible for the murder of her family.”

“In the distance I see a lighthouse. The light washes over us and continues on its rotation. This time, I don't know where the light will guide us.”

“‎I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.”

“Gabriel's voice can reach me anywhere. Even in a hurricane.”

“Fate,' I said, 'Is a theif.”

“His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.”

“In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.”

“You've been captive for so long that you don't even realize you want freedom anymore.”

“I can hear my brother's voice in my head. Your problem is that you're too emotional.But how can I not be emotional, Rowan? How can I not care?”

“I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?'Almost.Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.”

“None of the wives mention the security guards by the door, who will probably tackle us to the ground if we try to leave without our husbands.”

“Tell freedom I said hello.''If I happen to see it, I will.”

“What have you done? What have you given up?'So many things, Cecily. More than you know.”

“Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.”

“And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.”