“They called each other family and that’s what they were—sisters. Many people in the world had family of the heart, kin by choice rather than by blood, and hers had come along in her darkest hour and saved her life.”

“What well-bred woman would refuse her heart to a man who had just saved her life? Not one; and gratitude is a short cut which speedily leads to love.”

“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.”

“Did she ever regret her choices? Were her decisions more clear-cut than mine - or are there always shades of gray whe it comes to matters of the heart?”

“Kunti heard these remarks with fear in her heart but all her doubts were laid at rest by the manner in which Bhishma received her. The king and Madri were given a State cremation. The whole court went into mourning. The five children were received as princes and given into the care of the family tutors for instruction along with their cousins, the Kauravas.”

“We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too.”

“Her heart had already been broken many times over, and yet she still believed she was destined to meet the man of her life.”

“God had answered her prayer, not with the thing she asked for, but rather the thing she wanted most in her heart.”

“Her rank was higher than his, so high that no one in her family worked productively.”

“A mother’s traditional role prepared her to love her family by being with the family she loved.”