“I’ve stripped my life down,” he told me. “I don’t need much. I have all the company I want to keep right in here.” He shot himself in the head with his fingers. “People don’t understand about the need to live simply. They make appointments all day. They even schedule their own deaths. The first time they’ll have freedom to really be themselves is when they no longer exist. But up here, there’s nothing but me and the sky. A million billion stars.”

“Over the past 8 years, I have stripped my life down. I don’t need as much as I thought I did. It was hard at first to make that change. I had to have faith and patience. And so, I did. Now, I have God and great people in my life. Everything else just seems to follow. Sometimes we don’t understand about the need to live more simply. We can make appointments all day long, 7 days a week. We can even schedule and plan for our deaths. I was fortunate to be freed to really be myself again, while there is still time and something left of me. And now, up here, there’s nothing but me (and Kilo) and the sky and a million billion stars. And once again, I am free to dream...”

“The funny thing about good people—people like Daneca—is that they really honestly don’t get the impulse toward evil. They have an incredibly hard time reconciling with the idea that a person who makes them smile can still be capable of terrible things. Which is why, although she’s accusing me of being a murderer, she seems more annoyed than actually worried about getting murdered. Daneca seems to persist in a belief that if I would just listen and understand how bad my bad choices are, I’d stop making them.”

“I need to talk to you. I had a weird dream." "Let me guess. You got tied up by lady ninjas. With big hooters." "Uh, no." I take a sip of coffee and wince. It was ridiculously strong. My grandfather shoves a strip of bacon in his mouth with a grin. "Guess it would have been kind of weird if we'd had the same dream." I roll my eyes. "Well, you'd better not tell me anything else. Don't ruin the surprise in case I have it tonight.”

“I'd get out of here," he said. "Go someplace where no one knew me. Start over. Go to Paris like you did or go to — I don't know — Prague. Somewhere." He looked toward the window, like he could already see himself gone."Oh," she said, because it hurt that he was thinking about that when she was thinking about him. She narrowed her eyes. "What's stopping you?"The boy looked down at the book of fairy tales. "Nothing," he said.Lila wanted to be the one to stop him.”

“You didn't think I really liked you? Do you think I really like you now?"He turned toward her, uncertainty in his face."You did go quite a lot of effort to be having this conversation, but... I don't want to read too much of what I hope into that."Val stretched out beside him, resting her head in the crook of his arm. "What do you hope?"He pulled her close, hands careful not to touch her wounds as they wrapped around her. "I hope that you feel for me as I do for you," he said, his voice like a sigh against her throat.And how is that?" she asked, her lips so close to his jaw that she could taste the salt of his skin when she moved them.You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that."She smiled and let her eyes drift closed. They lay there together, under the bridge, city lights burning outside the windows like a sky full of falling stars, as they slid off into sleep”

“She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything.”