“Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home.”

“Nor can I allow you to leave my arms, unless I can be certain you know that this is where you belong. Can you not feel that your place is here - in my arms, in my home, in my life?”

“It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the same. You can’t live with it, you can’t live away from it. And it seems like from then on there’s always this yearning for some place that doesn’t exist. I felt that. Still do. I’m never completely at home anywhere.”

“If you die, Lily ... I’ll steal your soul and take you to the Abyss, where I will keep you in my magical dungeon so you can never escape.”

“Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home.”

“Fear is not shaking, knowing that you are going to be harmed. Fear is not sweating profusely because you can’t do anything else. Fear is not hiding under your bed or under your sheets or in your closet because you know the monsters are trying to find you. Fear is not having nightmares about these monsters because you know you cannot escape them. Fear is not anything I have experienced in my sixteen years of life. Fear is the feeling that a block of ice has been dropped into your stomach and it’s slowly melting sending poison coursing through your veins, rooting you to where you stand. Fear is knowing that there is nothing you can do about your current situation. You can’t run or hide or escape even in your dreams. Fear is not the knowledge that you’re going to be hurt, but the knowledge that you can do nothing to stop what is coming. Fear is learning that the person you love most has been dying for you over and over again because they value your life over their own.”