“...I tasted - perhaps for the first time - the true sweetness of possibility.”

“Could you have possibly put more water between us?”

“The stars could have burned out around us, the moon could have fallen from the sky, and I wouldn't have known it. Not when he leaned indecently close and pressed his cheek against mine to murmur, "Tell me a secret."I wanted him to tell me how he stopped time like that. How he read my mind. I wanted to admit I wondered if thoughts of me troubled him when he lay awake at night. But I could make none of that come to my lips....Instead... I whispered back, "I've seen the future."He didn't laugh. He didn't mock, not like he had done at Privalovna's performance. In the middle of our waltz, he stopped, nose to nose with me. He uncovered me with a look that somehow bared him, too.And his question told me everything - that he stopped time because he needed me, that he read my mind because we were one. That I troubled his nights, indeed, because what he asked revealed it all."Am I with you there?”

“Laughter rose from the clatter of china and silver, and I felt so very close to Zora's circle but not quite in it. It wasn't Zora's fault, because she addressed me often and encouraged her cousins to speak to me - once or twice with kicks beneath the table.But she couldn't know that the light on her circle paled to the light in mine. Even though I looked at the cousins, admiring their smiles and pretty laughter, I found myself drawn back to Nathaniel Witherspoon. And each time I caught him looking at me. At my mouth.”

“Because when I can believe in a villain, I can fear them. My pulse races, I worry about the heroes, I read through my fingers, and flinch when disaster strikes. I exhale my relief when all is well, and I really feel it when they fall in love. No matter how fantastic the world, how unique the magic that's written into it- I have to believe in the characters before I can believe in their gifts.”

“Was it enough to wear the night with me just once? I am unsatisfied.”

“Do forgive me.... I've no reputation of my own, and I forget they matter.”