Felix wasn't sure of his limits, if he had limits. After he'd been dead a while, he began to suspect he could swim to the bottom of the oceans. Beyond that. He suspected that he could swim so far down that he'd eventually go through the center of the earth and come out the other side. He could swim into the clouds, into the stars. Maybe there were ghosts on the other planets. Maybe there were ghosts laughing and splashing each other with the heat of the sun. He wasn't brave enough to find out.

— Lauren DeStefano

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

— Lauren DeStefano

Her hair is full of icy wind and daylight. She is every princess, every queen, in the history book.

— Lauren DeStefano

He talks softly, patiently, as I sit on the window ledge and watch boats with colorful triangles for sails scratch the ocean.

— Lauren DeStefano

He was now working his way through the many shades of grief. Sadness made everything gray, he'd learned, but there were different types of gray, some darker than others. There were dark spots in his memories he wasn't brave enough to enter.

— Lauren DeStefano

His lips are familiar. I know the shape of them, know how to make mine fit against them. His taste is familiar too. For all the illusions and colors and sweet smells... he has always tasted like skin. His breaths are shallow. I'm holding his life against my tongue, between my rows of teeth. He's offering it up.

— Lauren DeStefano

Home?' I say. It's a word that can mean anywhere and nowhere.

— Lauren DeStefano

I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.

— Lauren DeStefano

‎I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.

— Lauren DeStefano

I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.

— Lauren DeStefano