“Perhaps, thought Talon, there was a path in between. A way to shed their ignorance without losing their souls.”

“Picking locks was not a skill he had ever cultivated, but he persisted day after day, turning the tip of his talon into different ways of approaching a keyhole. He never tired, and he ever gave up...because if there was any justice in the universe, he wouldn't be trapped here forever.”

“I will be keeper of your secret," Talon told the silent grave of the forgotten inventor. "I will be the one who remembers why we forget.”

“Anyway, don't they have girls your age down there?" Talon shrugged. "Yeah...but none of them ever sprayed me with eye-poison.”

“Connor bangs his head back sharply against the wall, hoping to jar loose the bad thoughts clinging to his brain. This is not a good place to be alone with your thoughts. Perhaps that's why Hayden feels compelled to talk.”

“The way I see it, it's got nothing to do with all of that. It has to do with love...A person don't got a soul until that person is loved. If a mother loves her baby--wants her baby--it's got a soul from the moment she knows it's there. The moment you're loved, that's when you got your soul.--Diego”

“My grandmother used to say that twisting paths always cross again," he told her. "And whose paths are more twisted than ours?”