“Her head titled to the side and her eyebrows crept up her face. It was her uh-durrr face, she was just too kind to actually say it to me.”

“You're not alone, unless you choose to be." As she left my room, she said over her shoulder, "It's time to stop running.”

“Love doesn't come along too often. Believe me, I know. When it does, only the foolish let it fade. Even if it is him.”

“If it was going to kill me or carry me off, I thought it would have done so already. But it just sat there, looking at me. Its tail swooshed suddenly, and it felt like I was looking at an overgrown cat in reptile form.”

“You know, there are two types of people-ones who live their lives, and ones whose lives live them. You need to be the former, not the latter. And right now, you are letting your life live you. It's crushing you and completely out of control. You can't just let life happen, not if you want some say in what happens to you.”

“What do I do now?I didn't think my heart could break any more than it already has.The pieces still inside of me feel like broken glass.Every time I take a breath, they stab into me.It never ends....”

“The princess stood in the center of the cabin, her brilliant red robes and the rubies at her throat and her bloodred eyes all the color of hatred. With her stark hair twisted up off her neck, and her pale skin, and the live albino scorpions she wore as earring, she was an exquisite horror, a Kabuki doll constructed by an evil hand. And she was evil, her darkness coming to him in waves, emanating from the center of her chest even as nothing about her moved and her moonlike face remained unmarred by a frown.”