“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.”

“You can't edit a blank page”

“My own brother calling me a brickhead. Sneering faeries insulting me. Women punching me in the face. How much more am I to swallow in one bloody day?”

“It was a well-aimed arrow. Had anyone even noticed she was no longer at the library? All the people she'd worked with, worked for? All the patrons she'd helped? Had she been so replaceable that her absence hadn't caused a single ripple?Hadn't she mattered at all?”

“People in hell want snowcones.”

“Niall: We're tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will.”

“Shannon: Only the living suffered. Only they were riddled with guilt and regret and unanswered questions.”

“I would hope that my writing's cleaner than it was when I started.”

“I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.”

“Be yourself. Be true to that, to your heart. Patience. See what happens if you step back instead of bounding forward.”

“And yet, anything real, anything strong, was never easy. She'd been taught from an early age that the things that mattered most were the hardest to obtain.”