“You're too skinny."I could almost laugh. "Yeah, well. The restaurants in the Wilds are mostly closed. They're mostly bombed, actually.”

“The sky is stained pink and purple, and the shadows are thick, stark brush strokes on the ground. But the air is still warm, and several trees are crowned with tiny green leaves.I like seeing the Wilds this way: skinny, naked, not yet clothed in spring. But reaching, too, grasping and growing, full of want and a thirst for sun that gets slaked a little bit more every day. Soon the Wilds will explode, drunk and vibrant.”

“The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well”

“Sarah: "Not bad. You look almost human."Lena: "Thanks."Sarah: "I said almost."Lena: "Well, then, almost thanks.”

“If he were less well trained, and less careful, he would say hate. But he can’t say it; it is too close to passion, and passion is too close to love, and love is amor deliria nervosa, the deadliest of all deadly things: It is the reason for the games of pretend, for the secret selves, for the spasms in the throat.”

“I said that without love, there could also be no hate: without hate, no violence. Hate isn't the most dangerous thing, he'd said. Indifference is.”

“I used to lie here like this all summer long,' I tell her. 'I'd come up here and just stare at the sky.' She rolls over on her back so she's staring up as well. 'Bet this view hasn't changed much, has it?'What she says is so simple i almost laugh. She's right, of course. 'No. This looks exactly the same.'I suppose that's the secret, If you're ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.”