“Those brain-zapped kids weren’t the only - or maybe even the worst - enemy.”

“My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.”

“There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity.Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.”

“It was, come to think of it, a little like a kinder, gentler Psycho-Dad making one of his command decisions. Exactly the same, only without all the fuss and blood.”

“Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?"She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.Instead, he kissed her.”

“It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.”

“The things you think about when you're a hair's breath away from getting yourself killed.”