“Magnus hoped if he ever went mad like that himself, so mad that he poisoned the very air round him and hurt everyone he came into contact with, that there would be someone ho loved him enough to stop him. To kill him, if it came to that.”

“… because he had been waiting for someone to come back to him, so every time someone knocked on the door, he couldn't stop himself from hoping it might be that person, even though he knew he shouldn't hope.”

“A candle burned on the table, a candle burned … he whispered to himself — the beginning of something confused, formless; he hoped that it would take shape of itself. But nothing more came to him.”

“Nor would he recognize hope if it came to him. Too much a stranger, too long a ghost.”

“You didn't kill him. He would have killed you, but you didn't kill him."
"So? He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep.”

“He's just really unlikely as a hero — which makes him so brilliant, I think, because he's like this mad professor.”

“Percy pushed on his side furiously and the crack closed. His eyes blazed with anger. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her, but if he was she couldn’t blame him.
If it keeps him going, she thought, then let him be angry.”

“he came to think, It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say”

“For himself, he had never thought it would be this bad. He had stopped remembering her, except maybe ten times a day, but now she came to him and the forgetting would have to be done all over again.”

“So it was that Lone came to know himself; and like the handful of people who have done so before him he found, at this pinnacle, the rugged foot of a mountain.”