“Old pain was heavy in the heart, hard to move, and anyway, Dolores Umber kept a tight hold of her pains and grievances. She thought her pain was the last thing she really owned, the last thing that she could keep all to herself. Her very own thing, and she didn’t much care for the idea of someone else trying to take that away from her too.”

“She wanted Kristen to do all the horrible things she said she would do to her and to have her physical pain from Kristen’s hate replace her mental pain from her father’s love. Pain that comes from the outside was much easier to endure. The wounds heal, the scars go away, and it’s over. She could move on. She would live on and forget her pain. The wounds caused by her father, that festered inside Simone’s heart, mind, and blood would never heal. She would never be able to just move on and forget the scars.”

“She stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dark, almost black, filled with pain. She'd let someone do that to her. She'd known all along she felt things too deeply. She became attached. She didn't want a lover who could walk away from her, because she could never do that - love someone completely and survive intact if her left her.”

“Nicola had to move closer to Marcus, had to take his hands in hers and hold them over her heart as though she could give hers up for his if it meant she could take away all of the pain he'd had to deal with at such a terribly young age.”

“[Morgan] raised her arms to protect herself, wincing in pain but keeping her eyes squeezed shut...Somewhere nearby, she could hear someone whimpering, and she suspected that she was hearing herself.”

“Margrethe watched them paralyzed by the intensity of the emotions moving through her. So much pain and euphoria, a sense that even though her own heart was broken, the world could contain such beauty and magic she almost could not bear it? What did her own pain matter, in the face of that?”