“Tender," she said again. "Tender is kind and gentle. It's also sore, like the skin around an injury.”

“I've never been impulsive. It's always been in my nature to consider things carefully and then decide upon the best solution. Except, sometimes the circumstances change. Sometimes things get so complicated and so bad that your nature just doesn't matter anymore.”

“That was the thing about being bereaved. People were overcome with sympathy. They did things for you without even considering whether or not it was the right thing to do.”

“What kind of people?"The dead kind. The still-walking-around kind. The reeking, stinking, rotting-from-the-inside-out kind. Toothy and grinning, nasty with the dark and the dust of abandoned strip mines. But none of that was the whole truth. They were more than that. - page 135”

“In his youth, he was electrified. The stars were moving in his bloodstream. He would not have been cowed by the customs of an earthly monarch. When he loved, it was with a heat and a desperation that he carried like a sword. He loved in the way that Greeks burned cities.”

“The new mythology of love was that it bent to the fashion of the day, obligated to take the shape of doves, lilies, jewels. This is a lie. Love is sometimes as passionate as war.”

“I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground.”

“Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people’s misery. They lie when it suits them and don’t see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don’t have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person.”

“All my life, I've understood the nature of where I come from, but I never thought it might be wicked until now.”

“Do you really want to know where we come from?" she said. "In every century, in every country, they'll call us something different. They'll say we're ghosts, angels, demons, elemental spirits, and giving us a name doesn't help anybody. When did a name change what someone is?”

“The treachery of demons is nothing compared to the betrayal of an angel.”