“Grady knew no one she thought less attractive than Mink, or more preposterous than Winifred: yet together and around them they made a clear, lovely, light: it was as if, out of their ordinary stone, their massive unshaped selves, something precious had been set free, a figure musical and pure: she could not but pay it homage.”

“When Em and I got back together, I could see that she had never been less than what I'd figured her to be. If anything, she was always better than I remebered. And that what I think love is [...] When your hindsight´s twenty-twenty, and you still wouldn´t change a thing.”

“Grady for an instant felt the oddest loss: poor Peter, he knew her even less, she realized, than Apple, and yet, because he was her only friend, she wanted to tell him: not now, sometime. And what would he say? Because he was Peter, she trusted him to love her more: if not, then let the sea usurp their castle, not the one they'd built to keep life out, it was already gone, at least for her, but another, that one sheltering friendships and promises.”

“So the two went: the boy who had escaped from darkness because he loved light more than he knew and the girl who had become ordinary because she did not realize how wonderful it was to be a princess.”

“In that moment he had loved her far more than he had ever done when they were together and free. Also he knew that somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help.”

“She smiled, content in knowing no one had ever loved her as much as Lucas, and now she knew why. Because no one could love her more, or better, than the demon king.”