“I do, and the now-familiar warmth of his lips steadies me. He tastes of salt and the wine we shared with the others at our small farewell party.Aladdin pulls away first and lifts one of my hands to his lips, kissing the delicate henna patterns on my skin, then turning my arm over to kiss the inside of my wrist. The ship’s crew makes themselves busy on the other side of the ship, giving us privacy.“You’re the most beautiful girl in the world,” Aladdin murmurs. “Have I ever told you that?”“Enough to make me wonder if your father was a parrot.”

“I do, and the now-familiar warmth of his lips steadies me. He tastes of salt and the wine we shared with the others at our small farewell party.Aladdin pulls away first and lifts one of my hands to his lips, kissing the delicate henna patterns on my skin, then turning my arm over to kiss the inside of my wrist. The ship’s crew makes themselves busy on the other side of the ship, giving us privacy.“You’re the most beautiful girl in the world,” Aladdin murmurs. “Have I ever told you that?”“Enough to make me wonder if your father was a parrot.”

“For the last few centuries, these jeweled fruits have been my constant and sole companions. The greatest treasure in all the world, as comfortless as light to the blind.”

“Find me, my thief.”

“A kind of childlike purity to her repose that made the thought of kissing her seem vile.”

“To have thought that, with the right tests and the right lectures, I could be made into a cold-blooded, heartless killer. To have thought that I could ignore the beating of my own heart long enough to stop the beating of another's.”

“If people could fall apart, why couldn't they fall back together?”

“Everytime he looked at her she felt brighter inside, and she yearned to keep his attention, to hold his gaze.”

“It slowly dawns on me what it is, the sensation that has bridged the gap between how I saw the world yesterday and how I see it today. It compensates for my lost keenness and even makes everything around me a little brighter. Hope.”

“A body can't live without a heart. And I can't live without you.”

“Love is nothing more than elevated levels of dopamine, nor-epinephrine, and other chemicals. But the way Uncle Antionio's face lights up as they dance... I wonder what it would be like to feel that. To let the chemicals of romance take over for just a little while. Then I remember that I am immortal and that my body doesn't work like everyone else's. Who knows if I can even feel love?”

“I think of the five generations it will take before [Mr. Perfect]'s born, and I want to scream. I want someone now. I want someone who will look into my eyes and understand everything behind them.”