“If that moment had been a real thing, it would've been a butterfly, flapping and fluttering toward the sun.”

“I watched the edges of the leaves slowly unfold, fluttering in the breeze. "How long did you wait?" It would've been unbearably romantic if he'd had he courage to look into my face and say it, but instead, he dropped his eyes to the ground and scuffed his boot in the leaves- countless possibilities for happy days- on the ground. "I haven't stopped.”

“Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.This was the important thing.It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.”

“That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.”

“There were three boys in the doorway, backlit by the evening sun as Neeve had been so many weeks ago. Three sets of shoulders: one square, one built, one wiry.“Sorry that I’m late,” said the boy in front, with the square shoulders. The scent of mint rolled in with him, just as it had in the churchyard. “Will it be a problem?”Blue knew that voice.She reached for the railing of the stairs to keep her balance as President Cell Phone stepped into the hallway.Oh no. Not him. All this time she’d been wondering how Gansey might die and it turned out she was going to strangle him.”

“When we kissed, it didn't matter that I had been a wolf hours ago, or that I would be a wolf again. It didn't matter that a thousand snares were laid for us as soon as we left this moment. All that mattered was this: our noses touching, the softness of his mouth, the ache inside me.”

“My parents had always been so careful with me, until the day they decided I needed to die.”