“I stopped. She was bleeding after all. Perfect lines crossed her wrists, not near any crucial veins, but enough to leave wet red tracks across her skin. She hadn; t hit her veins when she did this; death hadn't been her goal.”

“Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.”

“Kat felt her heart beat faster, adrenaline pumping through her veins, and she knew he was right. She studied him for a long time. "Do you believe in curses, Hale?"

He looked at her. "I believe in you.”

“We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.”

“She would wonder what had hurt her when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it.”

“The woman said something to Roman. He stopped, turned to her, and shook his staff.
She crossed her arms. I couldn't see her face, but I read the body language well enough.”

“She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity.”

“At the base of her ankle is a deep, ugly scar she got when a car ran over her foot when she was six years old. That was in a small town in Bangladesh. Thus, even today, she hesitates superstitiously before crossing the road, and is painfully shy of walking distances. Her fears make her laughable. The scar is printed on her skin like a radiant star.”

“She looked at her own past, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn't been
her fault, but the fault
of that insecure little boy, who had given up after the first attempt.”

“I think her flaws make me love her even more. She's not perfect, but she's perfect to me”