Again Creb grunted. It was the usual noncommittal comment used by men when responding to a woman. It carried only enough meaning to indicate the woman had been understood, without acknowledging too much significance in what she said.

Reader, I married him.

The shadows are as important as the light.

I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But is this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

Your way of life is sinful and wrong," he said fiercely. Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear.

Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.

When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill

There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubble in amber.

What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules — it might be given for free, as with Jamie, or earned through time and hard work, as with Ian, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable, as with Jared. Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?

Seth, are you gonna get mad at me if I kill your sister? He pretended to think about it for a minute. Well... yeah, probably.

How did people do this — swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had — with less than the absolute commitment Edward had given me?

"He's like a drug for you, Bella." His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. "I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun." The corner of my mouth turned up in a wistful halfsmile. "I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personalsun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me." "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse."

Fairness is blue, of course.

And being alone is a lot more fun if it's optional.

Love, like respect isn't something you get; it's something you give.

At first, when we love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone.

I was thinking about another kind of river, one that runs trough every one of us, no matter where we come from, all over the world. It's the river of the heart, and the heart's desire. It's the pure, essential truth of what each one of us is, and can achieve.

It's good to know what's wrong with the world. Karla said, after a while. But it's just as importent to know that sometimes, no matter how wrong it is, you can't change it. A lot of bade stuff in the world wasn't really bad until someone tired to change it. I'm not sure I want to believe that. I know you are.I knoe we make things worse, sometimes, the more we try to make them better. But I want to believe that if we do it right, everything and everyone can change for the better.