“(On having being just proposed to)'Have you been thinking of this for long?' she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally.'Let's say it crept up on me,' he suggested lightly.That didn't sound very romantic. Muggers crept up on you; so did old age.”

“One Valentine's Day I woke up to find that my husband had laid a trail of red hearts from the bed and halfway around the house to my present. The gift was small because we didn't have much money but I was touched to the heart by the effort he had made to surprise and please me.”

“After all, Sergios was not all bad. He was tough, ruthless, arrogant and selfish, but while he might have the morals of an alley cat, he had been remarkably kind to her mother.”

“That's Collin."She panicked."He can't see you!"Don't tell me you're afraid of your own brother?"Staton seemed to think that was funny.She hated the smirk that crept over his face.She shoved him."You want Collin to kill you?Hide."That made him laugh louder."Kill me?"Stop it,"she warned him,or he'll hear you."You think I should be afraid of your brother?I'm immortal."Collin's heavy steps filled the downstairs hallway.Her heart raced.Why was life so complicated?”

“Real, she imagined later on, was something else; it had nothing to do with things you could touch. Real was being seen, noticed, acknowledged, and later remembered. Real was people thinking about you when you weren't in the room. If others thought about you, then you must be more than a made-up dream. You need other people to be real, she decided. Otherwise you might just be a speck, an atom, inventing an elaborate story. It seemed like a paradox, but it must be so. She knew other people were real by thinking about them. Her thinking of her parents and her brothers, her school friends, were proof that they were real. They were both outside and in her head. But how could she be sure she was in anyone's head?”

“When you let go of trying to get more of what you don't really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have.”

“Oh, Cole,” she said, “the jewelry box is lovely—”“It’s not for jewelry.”She gazed up at him, surprised by his sombertone. “Then what—”“It’s a memory box, Devon. Something in which to store all those memories you collect, so you’ll never lose a single one.” He paused, looking both tender and serious at once. “Unlike the wedding gift you gave me, this one comes with strings attached. If you accept it, I expect the next fifty years of your life in return to help fill it up.”Devon bit her lip to hide a wayward, trembling smile. “Only the next fifty?”He shrugged. “We can negotiate after that.”She nodded, swallowing past the tight knot in her throat. “That sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.”