“He was dancing to some music
No one else had ever heard
He'd speak in unknown languages
She would translate every word
And then when the world was laughing
At his castles in the sky
She'd hold him in her body
Till he once again could fly.”

“You could have had anything else in the world, and you asked for me."
She smiled up at him. Filthy as he was, covered in blood and dirt, he was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
"But I don't want anything else in the world.”

“The reason for his anguish, the intolerable burden which had broken him at last, was the simplest thing in the world: he loved his wife. He always had, and he always would. Nothing could change that, but that was what had made his agony bite so deep, the reason he couldn't forgive himself for not somehow making things "all right" again… and the reason he'd had to turn to someone else to rebuild himself when the collapse came. It had been cowardly of him, in many ways, but he simply could not have made himself dump his weakness, his collapse on her shoulders while she coped with everything God had already done to her.”

“He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry. […] She wouldn't laugh at him no matter what he gave her. But for his own sake he had to give her something he could be proud of.”

“…"Would you wait for me?" he asked suddenly, his voice husky and low. "it's not right, but would you wait? Would you you wait till the world is cured again? A year? Two years? Maybe longer! Could you give me all that time, Florentine?" She pulled back from him, wary of his words. What did he mean? "Till the world cured…" What kind of talk was that? She was fearful of what she didn't understand, but felt at that moment she felt their destinies in her hand…”

“His mother had been the world to him, and although she had done her best to prepare him, he had been too young to fully understand what death meant—until she was gone, and the great, raw, gaping hole in his heart could not be filled or patched or mended. He looked for her everywhere, even after he had been shown her body—looked and looked and she could not be found.”

“In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.”

“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”

“She had made the choice for him - in a moment of flight and panic, but she had made it - not realizing that her Jace would rather die than be like this, and that she'd been not so much saving his life as damning him to an existence he would despise.”

“Under this cold moonlight he felt the shimmer of self. He felt no guilt, no pain, no remorse for what he'd done. He could have killed if he wanted to, but he did not. He felt as if he understood men, their discontent, their need to see what they'd not seen before, their need to be where they'd never been. He was one of them. He'd lived in a world of killing and blood and this world was returned to him. He'd lived in the silence and ineluctable mystery of violence. He knew the hold war had on him, the gore that would never come off in this world. He knew he could have killed Mercy's brother with his hands and it was the knowledge that gave him peace.”