“Her mere proximity gave him the most peculiar sensation, like the kind of heat sent out when a log shatters to ash in a fire.”

“My mind is quiet now. There is no fire or ash, no sulfur or shattering glass. Only silence, empty and cold.”

“If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.”

“It is a dull sensation, your heart breaking, like the sound of a pebble dropping on the sand. Not a shattering, not a tearing apart, there is nothing shrill or grandiose about the sensation. It is merely an internal realization that something treasured you never knew you had is leaving forever.”

“True love is like a metal tested in a fire. Fires of adversity surround us daily. Are we to love only when it is merely convenient? Like gold or silver, which very hot fire must heat to purge them of impurities, love must be thrust into the fire from time to time to make it purer, stronger and more resilient. And in the same way, live shines its brightest right out of the flames.”

“White as ash, her face, but ashes hold the phantoms of fires.”