Vicki Pettersson

“That's what hiding away did, whether it was from the world or yourself, your past, or even your dreams. It took absolutely no effort to have a miserable life. But building a glorious one? A life worth living and sharing with others? That's what was hard." Joanna”

“He invaded my consciousness in the same way the ocean washes up on the beach, with sweeping tides of longing and regret, and with such power and raw force, I often woke with the taste of salt from my tears clinging to my skin." Joanna about Ben”

“Do I seem like the white-picket-fence sort of girl to you, Carl?" "No, you seem like the blood-soaked-walls kind of girl to me.”

“The only bone in my body he ever loved was his.”

“ 'When there's time for everything, there's value in nothing.' ”

“ 'You love her without willing it or wanting it, and that is the most exquisite pain of all.' ”

“ 'Even pain is impossibly exquisite.' ”

“Even with tortured minds and broken spirits, even bound to the Surface, they ached for God's presence. It would be like being drawn back into the womb. It would be rest. It was the only real redemption there was.”

“Because you can't unknow your life's experiences,' Grif said. This was his area of expertise.”

“Now her life was under attack, and she [Kit] was shocked to find how fragile everything she'd built really was. She was dumbfounded, too to find that while people were being ripped from her life like paper dolls from a chain, she longed to be the one who'd be gone first.”

“ 'It's much easier to destroy a life than it is to live one.' ”

“ 'You call this a catastrophe, but take it from me, the line between a catastrophe and a miracle is a fine one.' ”

“ 'Being single...is about hope. It's about the future...the person you might meet at Starbucks or online or in the next aisle at the grocery store.' ”

“But they weren't in an ideal world. And it was too bad, Kit thought, exiting the shop. Bridget might have talked to her if they were. Kit might have been able to trust her. And neither of them would have to fear a man with a whole different sort of thrust-corrupted, soured, rotting...and seemingly unstoppable.”

“ 'Sex drives us, love or no love. Power or no power. Money or no money. It's the most powerful drug in the world. Some pay for it. Some die for it.' ”

“ 'Plenty of men are good at acquiring money and cars and things, but only a few have real forward motion. You know. Thrust.' ”

“ 'I scrape under a nail and I pull out dirt. I pull off an overlay and I smell urine. It's the rot of their lives seeping into their nailbeds, you see? They can fix their hair and paint their nails and run on a treadmill until they're anorexia's poster child, but they can't fix their lives...lives of rotting perfection.' ”

“Even now...she [Kit] still had a need to believe that most people, that most of life, was good. That belief was a sort of strength, too.”

“ 'It ain't ever over. You can't have no future if you don't have no past, and the past ain't never done with you...At the end of your life, all you have is what you know.' ”

“ 'We've all had judgement lapses that had us tiptoeing toward our own personal apocalypse.' ”

“ 'Everything has its place. Let in only those things that are greatly desired, no more and no less. That's how to make sense of the world, and the only real way to achieve happiness.' ”

“She needed facts. Facts were bricks. Maybe she could build herself a wall with them, too, one tall and wide and strong enough to keep her alive when he was gone.”

“But many details were considered too small and mundane for the Centurions' purposes. They tapped the mud too briefly for things like new-fangled coffee-makers to matter. Instant coffee that tasted like a wet dream was apparently one of them.”

“...a companion had seemed unnecessary fuel when her body still burned at the core, waiting to ignite. But now, with the wind blowing icicles through her [Kit] veins, it felt like she, too, was in the grave. All her nuclear energy had been snuffed like a match between the night's icy fingers.”

“Success, she [Evie] claimed, made people want to trust you.”

“Why the hell was she smiling like that?...Her mouth was blown so wide that the soft insides showed at the corners, like another grin was building in there. As if her laughter tumbled. Like joy was a living thing.”

“People created chaos, not places, and they were damned good at it no matter where they lived. And when this glittering gem of a city teamed up with the world's oldest profession, fantasy piled atop fantasy; it could convince anyone that impulse was a virtue, not a vice.”

“And that was is. Life sometimes flips on you like that. One minute you're looking at your reflection in the water, not entirely sure you like what you see, and the next minute you are upside down, submerged in a world where even familiar things look new.”

“...Death," she said, as her hand dropped away, " is how you know you were alive in the first place.”

“So. You're a fallen angel." She folded her arms."I'm not fallen," he said roughly."Then what are you?"He shrugged. "Busted.”

“...you've been rooked. You know,you got the dust off. Killed. Murdered. Clipped. It's a rough deal, but you've had some good times, right?”

“I saw you, looking like Hayworth, making me want to pin you up, pin you down, take you for a different kind of ride altogether.”

“Are angels supposed to call humans Commies?”

“Charis sipped, smiling back. "...I saw God everywhere."Grif narrowed his eyes. "Really?"She nodded and leaned close. "We were actually pen pals. I'd write Him letters in Latin and leave them in my closet.""Why the closet?"She shrugged. "Because He didn't appear after I set my front yard's bushes on fire, so I decided He was shy.”

“People do lie to themselves, and they get away with it because every action affirms and reaffirms their perception. That's the power of the human mind. that's the power of thought, which is nothing more- and nothing less- than energy. And when you have a particularly powerful mind, extraordinary things can happen.”

“But no life was without it's strain & strife, not if it was fully lived. Opening up to experience, even the good ones like trust & love, was to open yourself up to the pain. I suppose the key was to not compound matters by making the rest of it unnecessarily hard. My need for control had certainly done that in the past. So I made a promise to myself in that moment. I would make a concerted effort to reach for what was soft & good in this world. I'd find a place to settle into, and hold still so that this world's good and soft could reach back & touch me as well.”

“What would become of me if I was never truly seen again?" - Joanna”

“...lovers, even those who are married, always exist autonomously of one another, no matter how close they are or how long they've known each other. That's why jealously can flare in even the most intimate relationships. Because you know that at some basic level this person exists separately from you. No mater how close you are, the landscape of their life is always tinted a different hue than your own." - Hunter to Joanna”

“What about Cher and Suzanne?" I called after him."I don't know, but if you end up kissing them, call me. I wanna watch.”

“Chemistry was such a strange thing. I'd be willing to bet even Micah couldn't tell me why hundreds of men could leave me cold, while this one could string me along forever with only a smile.”

“Miss me?" he whispered, giving me the once-over, eyes lingering on my chest. My heart skipped a beat. My glyph pulsed painfully."Like a urinary tract infection," I said, through gritted teeth.”

“I quickly found myself in the center of the room, trussed up to a sturdy, high-backed chair, which Joaquin happily assured me was an original Louis the Fourteenth. Oh goody. I'd hate to die bound to something from IKEA.”

“Most had faded to a light jade by now...all except Chandra, I noted, with more than a little satisfaction. She was still a dazzling Day-Glo emerald, and I gave a little finger wave from across the room. She merely returned the finger.”

“Next time," I said wryly, swinging open the door, "just give me a knife and ask for a vein.”

“The kiss was like swollen storm clouds ready to erupt, and when he moaned into my mouth, it was dewy and thunderous and zinging with ozone.”

“All right," Marcus said, like he was doing me a grave favor. "But take it slow, sister. Any sudden moves and we'll drop you like a used-up ho on the corner of Fifth and Bridger.”

“I think you look like the spawn of Satan.""Yeah, and you still look like my brother's favorite blow-up doll.""Speaking of, what's the deal with the size of my breasts in last month's manual?" He'd drawn me so top heavy a stiff wind could have knocked me off balance."Creative license," he said with a shrug."A little too creative.”

“I didn't know his middle name or his favorite color, but I knew how his thoughts felt caressing my mind. The bright tang of his adrenaline coursing under my skin. The force of his heart, strong and rhythmic and a bit sad, pumping within my own chest.”

“I snorted. "I could write a doctoral dissertation on his 'charitable spirit.”

“There's nothing wrong with you..not even the darkest corner of that beautiful soul. ~ Hunter”