“Wolves? I should have known. Of course you have wolves. Doesn’t everybody?” She snapped her fingers. “The gun, Lucian. Hand it over. I’ve decided I have to shoot you after all. It’s the only way to preserve my sanity.”

“Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other. In the same category I place not only bankruptcies, but the law which carries off the bankrupts’ effects, so as to defraud their creditors.”

“It’s raining wolves and panthers out there so we decided to put off exploring until tomorrow. Do you have any board games?”

“You have to stop and freeze the moment," he told me I had told her. "You have to make yourself remember by repeating it in your head over and over. You have to write to preserve your sanity.”

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

“It’s like I’ve known you my entire life,”“I think, in some ways, we have. Only you could know what I’ve been through; the humiliation, the judgments, the unwanted pity and none of it at your doing. We may not have known each other our whole lives but we’ve definitely lived them in parallel.”