“Tabitha's quilt was more than pieces of fabric sewn together. It was a patchwork of souls.”

“Death is a kind of guilt in itself. We're all alive in this world together, and we're also all mortal, but when one person pulls his thread through to the other side, it can start a chain reaction you never in your wildest dreams saw coming. Maybe you'll be left with nothing more than an unholy knot to unpick. Maybe a new design. Sometimes a whole new perspective on yourself.”

“I was sixteen and just waking up to the peculiar rules of love - how what's left unsaid between two people can be a far more complicated language than what's written on the page.”

“On the face of things, we were hopelessly mismatched, but somehow we fit together perfectly.”

“Not like me, who would have given anything to shed my cumbersome skin and bones, stripping myself down to marrow, to nothing more than a gambler's heart, which beat fast and true and still believed that somewhere out there, a deck was stacked entirely in my favor.”

“Sometimes I think I collect souls to make up for the ones I've lost over the course of my life.”

“She never understood that love -- especially that of a child -- was the most necessary weight you can endure in life, even if it hurts, even if it tugs bags under the skin of your eyes. Without it, the soul skitters to the edge of the world and teeters there, confused.”