“He'd wondered for so many years if he'd ever be able to forgive his father. Maybe he'd just used the wrong word. Surrender. Acceptance. Those seemed better.”

“Chase was gone then, and Donnie was back, alone in his room, wondering about those pictures from an art book he'd so admired. Because it felt like he'd just lived one, and it had been beautiful, so beautiful, and he'd been able to reach out and touch the lines of it, but it still hurt.”

“Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he'd been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did.”

“Everyone loved a good reader. And he'd always loved being a great reader - until recently. Maybe it was just part of getting older, or maybe it was being a librarian, or just being here, but lately he'd found he was becoming suspicious of his own love of books. All that reading - it had started to seem wrong, worthless almost, without purpose.”

“I wondered what he'd done that had been so terrible that he wouldn't accept even an ounce of kindness from another person. It seemed impossible just then that I could ever hate him more than he hated himself.”

“Words were weapons, his father had taught him that, and he'd wanted to hurt Clary more than he'd ever wanted to hurt any girl. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever wanted to hurt a girl before. Usually he just wanted them, and then he wanted them to leave him alone.”