“I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.”

“Used in a personal sense, the phrase 'achieve an end' seemed to her a small-minded snare. She preferred the word life, and, on rare occasions, happiness.”

“Because she was seventeen, and still alive, against thousands of years' worth of odds.Because she knew enough to fear what the future would bring.”

“Like punch through the brick wall he’d built around himself and give in to the sudden, desperate urges to touch, to taste, to feel. Krista Fucking Slater. Of all the women in the world, why was she the only one who managed to remind him he was still alive in a way no one had been able to in three long years?”

“But before I ran out and got shot by someone I merely hadn't seen, I examined the remote. There were a lot of buttons on it. None of them were marked. Naturally, I considered hitting some at random but decided I was thrilled to still be alive and unscathed.”

“The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”