“I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.”

“Sasha's green eyes were right up against yours, the lashes interlocking. "In Naples," she said, "there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones who you thought, maybe they will."...You opened your eyes, which you hadn't realized were shut again. "what I'm saying is, We're the survivors," Sasha said...."Not everyone is. But we are. Okay?”

“You kneel beside her, breathing the familiar smell of Sasha's sleep, whispering into her ear some mix of I'm sorry and I will never leave you, I'll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life, until the water pressing my shoulders and chest crushes me awake and I hear Sasha screaming into my face: Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine.”

“What I Suddenly UnderstandMy job is to make people uncomfortable. + I will do it all my life. ---> My mother, Sasha Blake, is my first victim.”

“And for an instant he would remember Naples: sitting with Sasha in her tiny room; the jolt of surprise and delight he'd felt when the sun finally dropped into the center of her window and was captured inside her circle of wire.Now he turned to her, grinning. Her hair and face were aflame with orange light."See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine.”

“...underneath that I'd said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only I'm an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe.”