“All my life, since I came to the Institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw the good in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace. When you are gone from me, who will see me like that?”

“Will looked down at himself, at the knife at his feet, and remembered the knife he hadburied at the base of the tree on the Shrewsbury-Welshpool road, stained with his blood andJem’s. “All my life, since I came to the Institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw thegood in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace. When you are gone from me, who willsee me like that?”There was a silence then. Jem stood as still as a statue. With his gaze Will searched for,and found, the parabatai rune on Jem’s shoulder; like his own, it had faded to a pale white.At last Jem spoke. The cool remoteness had left his voice. Will breathed in hard,remembering how much that voice had shaped the years of his growing up, its steadykindness a lighthouse beacon in the dark. “Have faith in yourself. You can be your ownmirror.”“That words have the power to changeus. Your words have changed me, Tess; they have made me a better man than I would havebeen otherwise. Life is a book, and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read. I wouldread them together with you, as many as I can, before I die—”

“I first believed without any hesitation in the existence of the soul, and then I wondered about the secret of its nature. I persevered and strove in search of the soul, and found at last that I myself was the cover over my own soul. I realized that that in me which believed and that in me that wondered, that which was found at last, was no other than my soul. I thanked the darkness that brought me to the light, and I valued this veil that prepared for me the vision in which I saw myself reflected, the vision produced in the mirror of my soul. Since then, I have seen all souls as my soul, and realized my soul as the soul of all. And what bewilderment it was when I realized that I alone was, if there were anyone, that I am whatever and whoever exists, and that I shall be whoever there will be in the future.”

“LoveMy soul was a light-blue gown, sky-coloured;I left it on a cliff by the seaand naked I came to you, resembling a woman.And like a woman I sat at your tableand drank a toast with wine and breathed in the scent of several roses.You found me beautiful, resembling something you'd seen dreaming,I forgot everything, I forgot my childhood and my homeland,I knew only that your caresses held me captive.And, smiling, you took up a mirror and bade me look.I saw that my shoulders were made of dust and crumbled away,I saw that my beauty was sick and had no desire other than to - disappear.Oh, hold me close in your arms, so tightly that I need nothing.”

“Here's the thing, Grace," Cal said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Ever since that first day when you smacked me in the head with your field hockey stick-""You just can't let that go, can you?" I muttered.He grinned fully now. "-and even when you hit me with the rake and dented my truck, and when you were spying on me from your attic and your dog was mauling me, Grace, I always knew you were the one for me.”

“How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?”