Not all monsters do monstrous things.

And at the end of life, I don't know what's going to turn out to be the true thing, or which church will be the right one. But I don't think it really matters.""Then what does?" I ask."Finding things that give you hope, and make you want to do good things for others.

But we are wolves, too. We are tearing up our own pack.

...I had believed she believed it, and I believed that someday I might could, too, when I were grown enough, but now, kneeling on the hard floors of the boardinghouse with Eliza praying for all of us, I can't feel it. I feel propped up -- on Mam's faith, on Eliza's, on all the women in this room. But all I feel is hollowed out and empty, like someone's scraped their fingernails along the inside of my heart.

I have become a veritable scholar in seemingly innocent ploys to get his skin against mine.

Maybe things should just stay the way they are."I can tell he's trying to follow that unmappable logic, made all the more inscrutable by how dedicated I am to both my nonsense and how violently I just vomited it onto him.

The truth is that Percy has always been important to me, long before I fell so hard for him there was an audible crash. It's only lately that his knee bumping mine under a narrow pub table leaves me fumbling for words. A small shift in the gravity between us and suddenly all my stars are out of alignment, planets knocked from their orbits, and I'm left stumbling, without map or heading, through the bewildering territory of being in love with your best friend.

I am not weak," Loki said. "I am not your villain, and I am not your fool. I am a protector of my homeland." He thrust his hand in the air. "For Asgard!

It's a strange feeling, realising that other people you don't know have their own, full lives that don't touch yours.

The truth is that Percy has always been important to me, long before I fell so hard for him there was an audible crash. It's only lately that his knee bumping mine under a narrow pub table leaves me fumbling for words. A small shift in the gravity between us and suddenly all my stars are out of alignment, planets knocked from their orbits, and I’m left stumbling, without map or heading, through the bewildering territory of being in love with your best friend.