“I turned back to my extracurricular study of death and disease. Because no matter what Grace thought, I knew that in Mercy Falls, it's never over”

“Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.”

“I turn back to the lake, stare at the ice slowly moving on the surface of the water. Pieces of the solid fall into the liquid, but it's all just water no matter what its form.”

“Early laurels weigh like lead and of many of the boys whom I knew at Eton, I can say that their lives are over .... Once again romanticism with its death wish is to blame, for it lays an emphasis on childhood, on a fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doctrine of future redemption.”

“Really, it's my fault. It was there. A hundred times there. How often did I see it? I knew. It kept happening. Over and over, you'd say you were through with him...and over and over, I'd believe it...no matter what my eyes showed me. No matter what my heart told me. My. Fault.”

“... I stayed because running seemed too strange and too complicated. All I knew was how to fall back, find a patch of solid ground, and then dig my heels in and fight to start over.”