“Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly content being the bride of death.”

“Miss Bennet, I am quite aware of your superior talent for cutting down the Lord's forsaken flock. I merely mean to spare your gown.'Thank you,' said Elizabeth, composing herself, 'but I should rather my gown be soiled than my honor.”

“It is their nature, beautiful and simple. That you would destroy such beings, Mr. Lincoln, such superior creatures, seems madness to me.”“That you speak of them with such reverence, Mr. Poe, seems madness to me.”"Can you imagine it? Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and death—the world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem?”

“I fear that a life of death has made me numb to both.”

“The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it.”

“But I am happy. And happiness, I have decided, is a noble ambition.”

“It was a sort of peace I have rarely enjoyed since. As if we were the only two souls on earth—all of nature ours to enjoy. I wondered why a creator who had dreamt such beauty would have slandered it with such evil. Such grief. Why He had not been content to leave it unspoilt. I still wonder.”