“She feels like someone has planted a tree in her chest and then pressed fast foward on the world, branches growing and twisting and pushing her apart from the inside.”

“It isn't the young men who call to her at night. It's the Forest. It's the whisper of the trees that there's somethine else, outside the fences. That there's still a world that's bigger than any she could ever comprehend and all she has to do is find the strength to go after it.”

“Knowing that this is what it means to live. That this love, this need is what drives us to push and fight and build and grow. That as long as there's hope and love in this world, there will always be the living.”

“Would you leave your world for me?" he asks. "I might." she tells him. She wonders how the world ever fell apart with this much love in it.”

“I stare at the way the tracks of her tears break across her jaw and along her neck, at how it looks like her face, once shattered, has been carefully put back together. And I wonder if that’s what my scars really are: proof that I’ve put myself back together again.”

“He is always there for her,always waiting. The most constant companion anyone could pray for. One of these days she will return to him. She will feel that desire again, that need beyond human comprehension, and they will be together forever.”

“There is a child - a baby - who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food. For flesh.”