Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are...

Under her palm, his heart beat strong and sure. It was such a human sound, so honest, so real.

I know human nature. We might sacrifice a few, because we are stupid and hardwired for group survival. But we would never die in the thousands because a god wished it. Those kinds of numbers...

Nothing’s ever gone. We fool ourselves that things fade, but they never do.

I need to fan myself.””No, you don’t.

You do realize this makes your wings even more unique.””Are you saying you shot me as a cosmetic procedure?

Kate Daniels, trained negotiator. When in possession of some valuable information, give it away to the first sexy man you see with no guarantee of return.

Option 1: Attempt to back out.Probable result: Death after painful torture.Option 2: Do the job and hope.Probable result: Death but probably no torture (good)

If you don’t explain it all to me, I might strangle somebody.” Of course, Raphael might like that…

Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain...

…there’s no such thing as a dirty fight.

You can see where it was, years ago. Like an old woman who was once beautiful, but time has taken her beauty away.

For the first time in forever, he was stunned to silence. Not by her words, but by the tenderness in her hands, the worry in her eyes. He was an archangel. He’d been wounded far,...

La belle Isabelle

Somehow the idea of Montgomery as a fairy doesn’t have the same effect on me as it appears to have on you.-Raphael

That’s all true, but I’m not doing it.”Raphael looked incredulous. “Why not?”The words exploded out of Simon. “Are you kidding me? Because you have never done one single thing for me in the entire time...

You can deduct it from my slow and painful death.

To spend eternity at my side?” But she was too far gone in sleep, and Raphael didn’t know if he wanted to hear her answer anyway.

When you’ve lived as long as I have,” he said, eyes heavy-lidded but definitely on her, “you learn to appreciate new sensations. They are rare in an immortal’s life.”She found she’d moved toward him. He...

She fights me at every turn, then nearly dies defending me. She comes more than willingly to my bed, then runs the very next morning. She wants nothing to do with me, and yet I...

I look into my heart and see the abyss looking back at me.”I won’t let you fall.