“It was like being in love with the sun: brilliant and intoxicating to be near, but impossible to keep to oneself.”

“I’d always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth.”

“There is not only one measure of beauty, Lanore. Everyone adores the red rose, and yet it is a common sort of beauty. You are like a golden rose, a rare bloom but no less lovely.”

“Men hid behind religion to keep others from seeing how frightened they were, how inept.”

“He'd observed over the centuries that what made people old was when they could no longer keep up with change. It's the beginning of the end, though few recognize it as such at the time.”

“I've come to warn you, too. It's a dangerous game you're playing. There's a reason the rest of us maintain a distance from Adair, and we've learned our lesson the hard way. But now you've shown him love and that's given him the notion that he is deserving of such devotion. Did you ever think that perhaps the only thing that holds the devil in check is that he knows how despised he his? Even the devil longs for sympathy at times, but sympathy for the devil is fuel for the flame. Your love will embolden him--likely in a way that will bring you regret.”

“Perhaps one day you will understand that, flawed as I am, no man will love you as I do, and you will search your heart and find that you love me, too.”