“It was just her and Midas in here, tucked away from the world. Here she could turn quietly into glass, with only love to distract her.”

“She was sleeping in a quiet bedroom beside her brother, separated only by glass and sand from the young man she loved, a young man who loved her back”

“Only later during her prayers had it come to her how cunning Satan could be. Her love for Marcus could become a tool against her, for when her heart and mind were on Marcus, Julia lay forgotten.Nothing must distract her from her mission here. And no one.”

“Her hair was a damp mass of curls at the back of her neck, and Will looked away from her before he could remember what it felt like to put his hands through that hair and feel the strands wind about his fingers. It was easier at the Institute, with Jem and the others to distract him, to remember that Tessa was not his to recall that way. Here, feeling as if he were facing the world with her by his side--feeling that she was here for him instead of, quite sensibly, for the health of her own fiance--it was nearly impossible.”

“Only reading, she knew, could distract her from her obsessive thoughts and restore her sense of peace.”

“The thought arrested her and she pulled away from him just to stand there a moment and take in the strangeness of it all. Music drifted down to her then, an odd tinkling sort of music with a rippling rhythmic undercurrent that seemed to tug the melody in another direction altogether, into the depths of a deep churning sea, but beautiful for all that, and so perfect and unexpected. She felt languid and free--all eyes were on her, every man turning to stare--and it came to her that she loved this place, this moment, these people. She could stay here forever, right here, in the gentle sway of the Japanese night.”