“The boys wouldn’t come to save him. Only Hazel would. And maybe that’s why the boys would win.”

“I’m not entirely surprised to find out it was Cash. The whole scenario fits his character more than it does Nash’s. Only a bad boy would come, uninvited, into a girl’s house and wake her up to seduce her in her own bedroom.And only a bad boy would think I wouldn’t mind. I have to smile at that.He’s got nerve. I’ll give him that.”

“A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.”

“... I'd already shot a zombie. Maybe this smartmouth blue-eyed apple-pie boy would be next.”

“If Peter was nine, and a new boy came to St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys who said he was ten, why, then, Peter would declare himself eleven. Also, he could spit the farthest. That made him the undisputed leader.”

“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue following their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist.“Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer."From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that, every time he heard the alarm, he would heed its message.”