“Then realization had dawned. "Oh, my God, you're the one who hurt Davis, the boy I was with. You saw us together, and you threw him down a gully. He broke both of his legs!""He lived?" Gaze narrowing, Lothaire had murmured, "Not for much Longer.”

“Oh gods... oh gods... I had hurt him... so many times, I had hurt him. By trying to hurt myself, I had hurt him. By trying to push him away, I had hurt him. Every time I opened my mouth and belittled myself with my "turns of rough poetry", I had sliced his heart as fine as my wrists. I did not know why he loved me as he did. I might never know. But as I stood there and held him, my back nagging at me and my leg screaming in protest, I realized that the least I could do was welcome his love with an open heart. And part of doing that was loving myself enough to want to live.”

“The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?”

“..., It'd taken her several seconds to react to the sight of them together. She'd been almost hypnotized by the scene as Lothaire drank. Chase's masculine face had been tense, his gray eyes focused on the ground. Lothaire's face had been starkly beautiful, his pale blond hair brushing Chase's shoulder.Light and dark. One terrible, one tragic.And Lothaire had been... hard. "Oh, gods!" She cried as she ran back along the trail. Hot poker for my eyes! Hot poker!”

“I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin.”

“I loved someone so much that I broke up with him because I didn't want to get hurt. Then when he proved he loved me back, I broke up with him again. I'm a fucking mess, but so are you. Most of us are.”