“I am so, so alive.”

“This time of year, I live and breathe the beach. My cheeks feel raw with the wind throwing sand against them. My thighs sting from the friction ofthe saddle. My arms ache from holding up two thousand pounds of horse. I have forgotten what it is like to be warm and what a full night’s sleep feels like and what my name sounds like spoken instead of shouted across yards of sand.I am so, so alive.”

“We dance, we dance. You hold the thread of my soul. You spin, you spin. And you unravel the part from the whole. We laugh, we laugh. I'm so far from where I began. I fall, I fall. And I forget that I am.-from Golden Tongue:The Poems of Steven Slaughter”

“I wasn't sure if I admired him for feeling everything so hard and fiercely, or if I was contemptuous of him for having so much emotion that he had to spill it out every window of the house.”

“This is a love story. I never knew there were so many kinds of love or that love could make people do so many different things.I never knew there were so many different ways to say goodbye.”

“You're here. So how can I leave?”

“So it comes to this: I would have lost her either way. If Cole hadn't reinfected her, I would have lost her in the hospital bed. And now Cole's wolf tozin pumps through her veins, and I lose her to the woods, like I lose everything I love.So here is me, and I am a boy watched--by her parents' suspicious eyes, since they cannot prove that I kidnapped Grace but believe nonetheless--and I am a boy watchful--because Tom Culpeper's bitterness is growing palpable in this tiny town and I will NOT bury Grace's body--and I am a boy waiting--for the heat and the fruitfulness of summer, waiting to see who will walk out of those woods for me. Waiting for my lovely summer girl.”