You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? What have you had more of?

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.

Why not open the door, and open their arms, and close them again around each other? Did the not understand how, in the strange chemistry of human emotion, his suffering and her, mingled together, could... countervail each other?

...magic was ugly—-a hard bargain with the universe, a calculus of pain.

Then there were things-- epic, terrible things-- that he didn't tell her but skirted around, like caressing the edges of a wound, hesitant, testing for pain.