“He isn't interested in simple. He wants what he wants. No matter how much trouble she is and no matter whether he even understands it himself.”

“Not for his people, not for the world he protected, but for himself. He wanted to matter. To her.”

“This was the absolute last woman on earth he should want—she was trouble, in so many ways. She was troubled, and that was just one of the reasons he didn’t need this.This was the absolute last woman on earth he wanted to want—she just plain and simple was trouble—he could feel that in his bones.And yet, as he stared into those big, green eyes, he did want.Hell, did he want.”

“How what she had done could never matter since he knew he could not cure himself of loving her”

“It wouldn't do him any good to cry, no matter how much he wanted to. He had to think. He had to try to gather as much information as he could, and lay it all out, and reason through it, and come up with some ideas of what to do and how to help.”

“The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.”