“I open my mouth. I want o say: I'm breaking, and i need someone to hold me together.But no sound comes out.”

“He blinks. Touches the side of my face, near my eyes. My eyes that are blue now, not green. With oval irises."I'm still me," I say, because my greatest fear now is that he doesn't want a hybrid Amy.He cocks an eyebrow. "You think I care if your eyes are blue or green? I just care about you." His hand slips down my arm, and he wraps his pinky finger around mine."You came back to me," I say, my voice breaking over unshead tears of joy."I'll always come back to you," he tells me pulling me close.Always.”

“I want to take her into my arms and hold her tight. But at the same time, I know that is the exact opposite of what she wants. She wants to be free, and all I want is to hold her tight against me. ~ Elder”

“Elder mocked me for praying once, and i spent an hour berating him for that. He ended up throwing up his hands, laughing, and telling me i could believe whatever i wanted if i was going to hold onto my beliefs so hard.”

“I choose this," I say, my voice ragged with want. "I choose you.”

“I can't be the kind of leader you want me to," he says. "I will never, ever be the kind of leader you want me to be. And I will be better because of it.”

“I am as silent as death. Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever. And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can't. I can't.”