“They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. ("Birthmark").”

“For a moment the two of them looked at each other, wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common ground, a place where sound was alien.”

“We burned down rooms. We knew what everything meant. We understood terror and fury as no one else had. It hurt to be together and hurt more to be apart. Our mouths clashed. Our teeth scraped. Our arms ached from the meld. We knew each other's smells and heard each other's voices and told each other things that no one else ever had.”

“He that say madness isn't contagioushas never spent his whole childhood locked upin a room without doors or windows where the grown-upslie chained together in their straitjacketsafter having tried to scratch each others eyes out andday and night planned to tear each other apart”

“People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.”

“The momentary darkness gave way to scores of small glowing lights. Blaise stepped into a candlelit room filled with people and furniture. 'Where are we?" he asked Livia. "How can a whole other room be here? There were only two rooms on the top floor.”