“she was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like.”

“Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.”

“It seemed to Coraline that it was crouching, and staring down at her, as if it were not really a house but only the idea of a house—and the person who had had the idea, she was certain, was not a good person.”

“There wasn’t anything that I didn’t love about her. Her sarcasm and wit were so much fun. She was strong and driven and so good with her creative thinking. She was so caring, and a good friend—she was everything I’d been looking for, when I wasn't even looking. But as strong as she tried to be, there was a vulnerability about her that made me feel so protective of her. I couldn’t help that I went all alpha male anytime a man approached her. She had no idea how attractive she is.”

“Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely.”

“Tipping her head, she stared into his tawny, hazel eyes, so intense, so burning-hot and all-consuming. Had she ever had a man look at her like that? Like she was all? Like she was everything? The center of his universe? Hell, screw the center … Law was looking at her like she was his universe.”