"I remembered suddenly that Aspen had always been this way. He sacrificed sleep for me, he risked getting caught out after curfew for me, he scrounged together pennies for me. Aspen's generosity was harder to see because it wasn't as grand as Maxon's, but the heart behind what he gave was so much bigger."

"Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express."

"They'd never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they'd been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love."

"His eyes alone set her insides ablaze.The blue looked dark as midnight at the moment, a twinkle in his eyes like they held all the stars in his gaze. He had a solar system inside of him, a universe of secrets Serah yearned to explore."

"I don't know whether to be pleased that our lovemaking was of such a high quality that you immediately want more, or if it's an indication you are one of those sex-addicted people who are never satisfied."

"You were wrong, Gram,' I said softly, tone emotionless because I was resigned to the awful, lonely truth of it. 'Love doesn't save our souls. It kills them."

"At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind."