“She often spoke of marryin' a butcher or a sausage maker, having a liking for those trades, as she said, for they knew you couldn't never get all the stains from their aprons, and didn't demand it.”

“She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn't like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn't stop, and she didn't like that at all.”

“She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.”

“Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time.”

“he begged. she demanded to know. A hand suddenly gripped his wrist.
He wondered if the hold came from the realms of the gods. But he didn't care. All he knew was what the Goddess was whispering to him”

“Ellen could have killed me," Jack said quietly, "but she didn't. She saved my life."
"How come?" Fitch demanded. "After all this?"
Ellen turned scarlet and stared at the ground. "Maybe none of my opponents ever gave me flowers before," she mumbled.”

“I knew a girl, once, immortal like me-"

"And she was with someone mortal?" said Alec. "What happened?"

"He died," Magnus said. There was a finality to the way he said it that spoke of a deeper grief than words could paint.”

“Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.”

“How could she know what she wanted to do with her life? All these years she thought she'd be a healer like Mama, and now she knew it was never going to happen.”

“She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.”