But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I’m tired and the feeling that I’ve had for a while-that something is haunting me down-becomes all consuming and I’m frightened that one morning...

When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don’t know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey....

At times it’s like sadness has planted itself on her face, refusing to leave, an overwhelming sadness, and sometimes I see despair there, too.

She made a sound of regret. ‘We come second, you and I, Luc-ien,’ she said. ‘Our allegiance is always to our kingdoms. Without that allegiance, our people would fall.’She placed her head back against his...

I’ve been waiting for you all night and day,’ she said.Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of...

But grieving people are selfish. They won’t let you comfort them and they say you don’t understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you’ve been functional to them.

I can’t believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn’t set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and...

The people I’m stuck with in my life now aren’t sucking the life out of me, they just suck.

Simple dreams are the hardest to come true

Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian’s mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat...

He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those...

How unladylike of you to mention such a thing.

He took my hand, made me stand on the branch and asked, “What can you see from here?” “Nothing” I said,”Know what I can see? From this distance everything is so bloody perfect”.

The pages aren’t numbered, so I don’t know whether I have the beginning or end or whether it’s in sequence but these days I’m not really looking for continuity.All I’m after is something that makes...

This is the best night of my life,” Raffy says, crying.”Raffy, half our House has burnt down,” I say wearily. “We don’t have a kitchen.””Why do you always have to be so pessimistic?” she asks....

If she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she’d never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.

Phaedra looked across the water and her eyes met Lucian’s. Their needs came second. It came from the privilege of being trusted.But that doesn’t mean I love you less.

And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for.He wished that he had never met any of them.

Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.

Truth is dangerous.

If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one’s worth came from others.

We didn’t let them do anything to us, Travanion,” Beatriss said fiercely, “They did it without out permission.

They’re my best friends, I’m going to know them until the day I die.

Then I choose to drown. In hope. Rather than float into nothing.

I remember passion.

Do you miss being friends with Santangelo?” I ask her after the lights are out and we’re almost asleep.”What makes you think were friends?””Everything.”I hear her yawn.”Being enemies with him is better.” she tells me....

I met this boy here who I knew as a kid and his mum left him with a pedophile for two weeks when he was eight years old and I’m presuming you know everything there...

Are you an idiot, or an idiot?’ Gargarin hissed.’The first one. I really resent being called the second.

Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get my hopes raised about something....

How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?

Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.

I’d run you know. It’s like when you’re really busy doing something and you don’t have time to think about things. Well, I’d run and run and run so I couldn’t think.

It’s like you have a plan and someone comes along and makes you want to change it all, but you still like your first plan, no matter how fantastic the second one makes you feel.

Those full of fear were the most dangerous of people.

The gods do make playthings of us. But it is we mortals who provide them with tools.

And we all end up where we started

She bewitches you,” Trevanion said. “And she is yours for the taking. Any fool can see that. So take her and get whatever needs to be gotten out of your system.”…”Maybe you are right, Trevanion,”...

Because we don’t live in a society anymore, Tom. We live in an economy. We’re not citizens. We’re customers. That’s what this government’s done to us.

In the end, the sum of my vices is all me.

He bursts out laughing. It’s short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction’s already mine.

What’s with what you’re wearing?” Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others.”It’s pretty hideous, isn’t it?” I say.”Don’t force me to look at it,” he says. “It’s see-through.”That kills conversation for a...

Taylor, what about the Brigadier who came searching for you that day? Whatever became of him?” I try to explain that the Brigadier is of no importance to my story, but he always shakes his...

Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he’s...

I hear Mr. Palmer tell Hannah that it was an electrical fault. Five arsonists in one school and it ends up being something so technically boring.

Imagine the state of one’s mind if they were to recall its details. All those months cocooned and then the onslaught of this ugly world. Lights and noise and strangeness. It’s no wonder we scream...

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.I counted.It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going...

Today this courtyard was filled with great warriors. What is more? But it was not filled with great men who have the heart to rule a kingdom. Any man can kill, Finnikin. It is a...

When one is silent, those around speak even more, my lord.

His voice is deep and gravelly. I once heard one of the girls say that he had the voice of a sex god, but because I’ve never really heard what a sex god sounds like,...

The music department is going to do a musical next year,” he tells me, rolling his eyes like I would.Justine is running toward me, and I can tell by the look on her face that...