Amie Kaufman

“He’s as tense as I am, maybe even more so, but it’s so hard to reconcile that with the serenity of weightlessness. His faux-blond hair is floating out away from his head. He’s wearing a worn, much-mended, and too-large shirt his friend in town must’ve found for him to help him blend in. He looks nothing like the Romeo who dragged me off the base, nothing like the Cormac who threw himself between his own people and me. It’s like that guy’s gone, and I killed him.”

“Interviewer: So. Tell me about your mother.Ezra: You're taping this, right?Interviewer: Audio only. Camera is faulty.Ezra: Okay, well for the benefit of the sight-impaired, I am now raising my… oh, dear… yes, it's my MIDDLE finger at Mr. Postgrad here.Interviewer: Mr. Mason...Ezra: Now I'm wiggling it.Interviewer: Terminating interview at 13:58 on 03/19/75.Ezra: Look at it wiggl--audio ends-”

“What does it mean?” Flynn turns to gaze at me, eyes finally meeting mine.I find myself smiling because I know exactly what it means. “It means the clouds are clearing on Avon.”

“All he cares about here on the edge of forever, is her. He does not want to die. Not because he is afraid. Simply because he cannot bear the thought of leaving her behind.”

“My breath catches, responding to an unfamiliar pull in my chest, an ache in my soul. I shouldn’t miss him, but I do; this boy who had every right to pull that trigger, and instead threw himself between me and death. This boy, the only one who believes I’m not what they say I am what I believed I was; a soldier without a soul, a girl with no heart to break. He’s the only one who’s proved me wrong.”

“The decker these ***holes brought with them is top tier, but I'm going to stomp his jelly beans so hard his kids will be born crooked.”

“He can’t take his eyes off the stars, but I can’t take mine off his face. I can see the stars reflected in his eyes, can see the wonder of it in the way his mouth opens but no sound comes out. His eyes, his face—they’re beautiful.”

“But free will is what it means to be human, and no one can determine the path you take through this universe. Choice is our greatest right, our greatest gift-and our greatest responsibility.”

“Forget everything else. Forget everyone else. You're exactly my kind of girl.”

“Clear skies, cousin". Good luck, he means. There are never clear skies on Avon, no blue, no stars. But we don't give up hope, and we use those words to remind ourselves. Clear skies will come, one day.”

“But we have seen how brightly light shines in the dark, how sweetly music fills the quiet. All these years you have known only shadow and silence, and we have so much to show you. To save you.We are all worth saving.We cannot ever know, not truly.But we have faith.”

“Are you afraid?""Yes.""Energy never stops, remember. It just changes forms.""I am still afraid.”

“Numbers do not feel. Do not bleed or weep or hope. They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love and allegiance. At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeros.”

“I'm leaning against the bookshelves when it occurs to me that one thing here is real-the books. I reach behind me and let my fingers trail over the rough leather of their antique spines, then pull one free. Nobody here reads them; the books are for decoration. Chosen for the richness of their leather bindings not for the contents of their pages. Nobody will miss one, and I need a dose of reality.”

“Before this moment, I have never whished to be something other than what I am. Never felt so keenly the lack of hands with which to touch, the lack of arms whith which to hold.Why did they give me this sense of self? Why allow me the intellect by which to measure this complete inadequacy? I would rather be numb than stand here in the light of a sun that can never chase the chill away”

“We see them as they cannot, will not, see each other--we see his heart in the way he looks at her; we see her soul calling out for his every touch. It would be so easy if they could only see inside each other as we can.And yet, there is beauty in the way they find each other: slowly, in a fragile dance of sidelong glances and accidental touches. To see them come together, souls binding without knowing each other as we do, without being certain of what the other's heart holds, is to learn something new...Faith.”

“I never knew it was possible to be so miserable in so many ways.”

“Sometimes you take all my words away from me.”

“Life is pain. We are all in pain, all the time.""There are other things this universe has to offer," says the creature, "Light, live, touch, sensation. The way you are all made of the same pieces; the same fragments of stardust and yet you are all so different.”

“His eyes move to my lips, and I know he’s thinking the same thing; I can feel it in the way the air charges between us. I can almost taste him half an inch away, can feel the way the tiny hairs on my skin lift and reach for him like plants seeking the sunlight.”