“Was it a strain so heavy that L's back curved under all its weight? Was it an agony so terrible as to leave the indelible dark circles around his eyes? Was it a feeling so bitter that every bite he took needed to be coated in sugar? The chronically rounded shoulders, the inevitable dark circles, the eccentric tastes--L suppressed the pain of being a champion of justice, but the evidence of the pain was molded into his very body.”

“For all his pain, he longed to see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, when he thought of that gentle familiar attitude and all the attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew her picture in his mind - a longing for the very atmosphere she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal centre.”

“Fingers circled my wrist. My head whipped around to see Ren’s eyes dancing with dark mirth while he drew me toward him like he was reeling in a prize catch.“So what’s for lunch?” He pulled me onto his lap.”

“There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weights so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, with someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”

“He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure---the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success.”

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”