“Maybe she'd always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them.”

“Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always.”

“We'd spent maybe ten minutes together, during which time I'd accidentally swung a sword at her, she'd saved my life, and I'd run away chased by a band of supernatural killing machines. You know, your typical chance meeting.”

“Daddy always said the only thing worth begging for was your life, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes your love is a little bit worth begging for, too.”

“Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old.”

“Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl… interrupted.”

“Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep--
But nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep.
Maybe you just had the worst day of your life;
Well, you know, there's no escape.
That's no excuse. Just suck up and be nice.”

“Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be recreated.”

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.”

“Maybe she'd been drinking too much of the super-sweet Mexican Coca-Cola they had down here. Or maybe she was just tired, alone, and far from home. Because somewhere in the brittle, concrete center of Azrael's dark heart, something was melting.”