“There are some losses we never get over.”

“I guess there are some things you never get used to.”

“-"your nocturna will never take another human, not for all the length of time in the universe and beyond. Your nocturna is wedded to your soul. Some even say"..."that it is the nocturni who carry souls into the Shadow World when we die, where they will keep watch over them and keep them safe forever. Some say that is nocturni's ultimate purpose.”

“I don't understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.”

“Over the past week, I’ve accepted that I will never love Julian as much as I loved Alex. But now that idea is overwhelming, like a wall between us. I will never love Julian like I love Alex.”

“They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it. If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.”

“We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.”