“All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?' 'Here! and here!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast, 'in whichever place the soul lives.”

“And you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?""Here! and here!" replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and another on her breast: "in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong!”

“War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning.”

“Max smoothed Cameron’s curls from her forehead and placed a feather light kiss there before he rolled beside her. While his heart beat a jungle rhythm, his soul remained rooted firmly inside hers.”

“Here, her hand in mine was the one reality that severed us from the cold click-clack of Hell. I rubbed her hand and she sighed; wasn’t that meaning? Wasn’t that something we could cling to? I could be with this other. I could form no other relation, but maybe her hand in mine was enough, both sufficient and necessary. In Hell there was no sense of place, because all places were the same. Uniform monotony. A place without place. A place without context. But, here, now, I could rub her hand and she would sigh. She was a difference. Perhaps each person was the only difference in all these halls of unchanging ranks of books, kiosks, clocks, and carpet, and that, and that, at least, we had to hold to.”

“She won't come back here like that," Lee said weakly. "Lightning never strikes the same place twice, right?"Filo stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "No, Lee," he said, giving her a withering look. "A place is never the same after lightning strikes it. I guess that makes you the lightning.”