“I'm here!" I said..."I'm read to go home!" As if they couldn't see me. As if I couldn't remember what it had been like, fluttering next to someone's ear and whispering into it. How the whole earth was like a musical instrument that we could play effortlessly....I could not fly. My sister was not there. My heart was broken.”

“I felt like someone had ripped my heart out and tossed it across the other side of the room. There was a burning, agonizing pain in my chest, and I had no idea how it could ever be filled. It was one thing to accept that I couldn't have Dimitri. It was something entirely different to realize someone else could.”

“At home, they'd clipped my wings and then caged me so I couldn't fall. Here, they bandaged one another's broken wings, helped each other fly.”

“I certainly couldn't have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain--abuse, broken home, a runaway sister, a brother with cancer--the books allowed me to withstand. They sustained me. I read still, prolifically, with great passion, but never like I read in those days: in those days it was life or death.”

“I didn't eat.""What difference does that make?""I'm not like you. I can't recharge by feeding off someone. I need food.""I know that! When was the last time you ate?""Yesterday.""Yester--why the hell didn't you eat?""We had to go buy condoms, remember?""And you couldn't grab a sandwich on the way out?" he said hysterically. "I'm gonna die because you couldn't grab a sandwich?”

“Petey," I whisper, his ear maybe an inch away from my mouth. "It...it feels like...wicked like...home when I'm with you. Home”