“Get up to turn your chair away from hera few degrees. And look at me. I maybe someone else's longed-for phantom. Pourme some more wine; tell me the story; listen:it's a dreary wish to want the whole world ghostless.”

“I will tell my story, and my reader shall judge for me. I will tell my story, and so contrive to pass some few hours of a long eternity, become so worrisome to me.”

“I thought to myself then that it didn't matter where I ended up; I'd always be living that summer in that town, wishing that I;d done things differently, tormented by the fact that I hadn't. I'd never go far enough to be able to escape it. Maybe you're happy about that. OR maybe you're not. Maybe you're carrying your own regrets, and you understand how easy it is to let your life get away from you. I wish I could be the hero of this story, but I'm not. I'm just the one to tell it, at least my part in it- the story of Katie Mackey and the people who failed her. It's an old one, this tale of selfish desires and the lament that follows, as ancient as the story of Adam and Eve turned away forever from paradise. ”

“Donia looked away. "I pushed her toward you.I just made a mistake when I let myself think that you'd be mine for a few years... She's your match. I'm not.""Maybe someday, but right now... I was carried away by the first summer. It's a heady thing, but I can redirect that energy. Let me have the dream of us for as long as we can. That's what the court needs--a happy king, a king who can't stop dreaming of being lost in someone who wants to be just as lost. Tell me you'll let me get lost in you.”

“i wish i were someone else, even though i know i'll never, ever be able to get away from what i've done and what's been done to me.”

“Part of me wanted this more than anything else in the world—to have someone to hang out with, be like everyone else for a while. The rest of me screamed to get the hell out of there, not to get sucked in.”