“One more time, she promised herself. That wasn't too trollopy. She wouldn't be too trollopy.But when they actually got to the guardhouse?Trollopy.”

“So she forgave him. And instead she berated herself for her suspicion, for her snooping. For the things she promised herself she wouldn't do, the feelings she wouldn't have.”

“To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?”

“It wasn't awful to be dead. The stillness would almost be a relief. She wouldn't want pain, she wouldn't want to be wounded or mutilated. She could never shoot herself or jump off a building. But being dead wasn't unthinkable.”

“She wasn't there. He wouldn't have had to look too closely. She stood out from others like an angel in hell or a rose in a sewer.”

“If it wasn't for Noah, Echo would need me more... she would still be insecure, she would still be obsessing over the scars on her arms. She possibly wouldn't have recovered her memory of the night she got them. If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't be moving on with her life. Damn him for being a great guy.”