No fairy tale, this. This was by no stretch of the imagination a polished fantasy. This was a searing, living force, rough around the edges, unfamiliar and bittersweet. And precious.

— V.S. Carnes

Oh, Lord, why was she doomed to adore a man steeped in blindness and utter stupidity?

— V.S. Carnes

Remind me to thank God I don’t have a sister.” Caine eyed him critically. He was a filthy heap of blood and soot and sand stuck to the gun oil on his face. “Yeah,” without much enthusiasm. “I’ll thank Him for ya.

— V.S. Carnes

She accepted it uncertainly. “This will help?” Without waiting for an answer, with that unsettling trust of hers, she popped open the lid and dug in her finger, smearing the slick substance on and around her mouth. Going outside the lines, as he deduced she did with most everything in her life. When she was done, she looked absolutely ridiculous. Caine barely resisted smiling at her. “It will help immensely.

— V.S. Carnes

She’d said she loved him. She'd put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.

— V.S. Carnes

She thought she loved him. She was crazy.

— V.S. Carnes

She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an entirely different instinct, altogether: to fool her and anyone within a dart's range... to protect himself.

— V.S. Carnes

She was an extension of his dreams. A sprinkling of magic dust, of unfeasible wishes, on his stable existence. The one thing-the one bright, marvelous thing-he wanted more than the world, but didn't deserve. However much he was tortured for her sake, however much blood he had spilled to protect her, the bruises to his body and the thrashings to his sanity, it would never be enough to make a wretch like him worthy of such a miracle.

— V.S. Carnes

She wondered how a man could look into a woman’s eyes and lie so completely, so convincingly. She wondered how he could have looked and not seen the love that had glowed there, the blind faith, the unconditional devotion. Furthermore, she wondered how he would sleep at night, knowing he had betrayed her so effortlessly.

— V.S. Carnes

Shifting uneasily, Caine cleared his throat, left to wonder why her eyes would make him so unbelievably uncomfortable now after all that had already passed between them these past few weeks.“Caine?” That would be why. It was a question of insurmountable proportions. A single word that held every fear he had ever had—and every wish he had ever made on those cursed stars. She needn’t say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.

— V.S. Carnes