Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.

Remember what I've told you. Remember me.

They may be nothing like you, he had written, they may surprise you, they may even repel you when their behavior is out of control, when they climb out their windows and drink underage and break every rule, but you will love them in a way you had not thought possible before, no matter who they turn out to be.

I knew that my brother would still be a part of this world no matter what happened next. I felt my love for him so deeply that my blood seemed to flow down the street to him. My blood sang out my prayer for Luis even while he was still living in our world.

Love wasn't rational; there was no proof that it even existed outside of people's imaginings.

In the human world you had to choose your loyalties carefully. You had to see through to someone's heart.

I signaled for him to lean down, and he did so. I then did the second most terrible thing a mother could do, in some ways worse than burying her beneath the stones. I breathed my daughter's last breath into his mouth. I gave her to him so that her spirit would belong to him and he could carry her with him, so that he could still be a man with a soul, even though he had lost everything else.

Love could do that to some people and they wouldn't even know much they'd missed out on; they simply remained in the place where love had left them, while the whole world spun around.

You rescue something and you're responsible for it. But maybe that's what love is.

Tell me you won't walk away again and I'll call the whole thing off.

To friendship," she agreed, although for the longest time they didn't let go of each other and she knew exactly what he was thinking—This must be fate—for that was what she was thinking as well.

Who would have guessed you'd be crying over that old hay bag." But that wasn't it at all, Elinor saw that from the look on his face when he turned to her. That was the attachment, that was the way he held on to her.