“Jace was still staring at her as if she'd told him she'd found out one of the Silent Brothers doing nude cartwheels in the hallway.”

“She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.
And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find
herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.”

“Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.”

“No one else knew how she'd longed for extinction, how much part of her had hungered simply to quit. To end. She'd once intended, coldly and logically, to do just that… She'd sacrificed her naval career… and a corner of her mind suspected she'd actually wanted to sacrifice it — that she'd planned to use the loss of the vocation she loved so much as one more reason to end her dreary existence. It had seemed only reasonable then; now the memory was one more coal of contempt for her own weakness, her willingness to surrender to her own pain when she'd always refused to surrender to anyone else.”

“She'd always believed that people come in two varieties: those who look out the windshield and those who stare in the rearview mirror. She'd always been the windshield type: Gotta focus on the future, not the past, because that's the only part that's still up for grabs.”

“I found myself staring at her, which was stupid since I'd seen her a billion times. Still, she seemed so much more mature. It was kind of intimidating. I mean, sure, she'd always been cute, but she was starting to be seriously beautiful.”

“She thought of something her mother had told her when she'd finally broken up with one of her most dysfunctional boyfriends.”

“Of course she'd told him she would, but if the man hadn't registered her sarcasm, then he wasn't making full use of his ears.”

“And the look on her face as she opened the door
Was like an old joke told by a friend.
It'd taken ten more years but she'd found her smile
And I watched the corners start to bend.”

“I stare at her, as dumbstruck as if she'd just admitted she's a Scientologist with an invitation to join Tom and Katie on the spaceship when it shows up.”