You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.

——— call down the hawk

• Dreams are not the safest thing to build a life on.
• Boredom and secrets: an explosive combination. Something was going to burn.
• Ronan hadn't known anything about who Adam was then and, if possible, he'd known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God: Please
• Declan hated that he loved someone who wasn't real.
• Art was a solid part of Jordan. Not like take up a brush and let your soul pour out through pigments, but rather art as an object in the trunk of your car, art as a physical proof of cultural identity, art as a commodity.
• "Tamquam—" It had been over a year since either had sat in a Latin class, but it lingered as their private language. "—alter idem"
• For one second of one minute of the day, he didn't run the probabilities and worst-case scenarios and possibilities and consequences. For one second of one minute of the day, he just let himself feel. There it was: Happiness.
• What is a dream without its dreamer? It's an animal in a room without air. It's man on a dead planet. It's religion without a god. They sleep without us because they must.
• Jordan had only one thought: No one knew I existed. Her entire life had been spent as Jordan Hennessy, an existence shared with between six and ten other entities at any given time [...] She'd painted hundreds of paintings with astonishing skill and no one would know she ever existed. She'd only ever lived someone else's life. No one knew I existed.
• He felt a bright humming energy all through him, something he hadn't felt in a very long time. His stomach was a ruin. His life in black and white; this moment in color.
• In a way, the Lynch brothers had always been the most important and truest definition of the Lynch family. [...] Secrets bound them together far more tightly than any friendship ever could. [...] Ronan didn't know who he would be without them.
• The world was broken, Declan thought. It was broken and could not be fixed. He thought, And I never actually lived, either.

——— mister impossible

• If Farooq-Lane thought about it, the apocalypse had already happened, just inside her.
• Jordan owed it to them to live a life, since they never got a chance. She couldn't control Hennessy's recklessness or the Moderator's ruthlessness. But she could control her own fearlessness. She was going to live as big a life as she could, for as long as she could.
• It was about Adam's gloves here, but it was also Adam's jacket tossed on a dining room chair, his soda can forgotten on the foyer table, him somewhere tossed with equal comfort in the Barns, his presence commonplace enough that he was not having to perform or engage with Ronan at all times. He was not dating Ronan; he was living in Ronan’s life with him. Shoes kicked off by the door, gloves off. A future. A good future..
• Jordan Hennessy was art in front of art in a room that was art in a building that was art in a life that was art,
• The music from inside drowned out every other sound. It was the sort of music Ronan heard all the time when he was at Aglionby, the stuff that made him feel as if he truly were nothing like other people, not because he was gay or because his father had been murdered or because he could take things out of his dreams, but because he couldn’t bring himself to sing along to the shit other students sang along to. Funny how a handful of people loving a song you couldn’t stand could make you feel inhuman.
• No matter how exciting Hennessy made their lives, no matter how many high-end jobs she had them take, how many lowbrow parties she had them attend, how big she made their shared life, Jordan still wanted her own. No one wanted to live with Hennessy forever, not even Hennessy.
• Golden Matthew, charming the city. Rebellious Ronan, finally grown into something useful. Cunning Declan, trafficking in art and stories. The brothers Lynch.
• Art took hours, days, weeks, years, of single-minded focus. This investment meant that everything that touched the art-making experience got absorbed. Music, conversations, or television shows experienced during the making became part of the piece, too. Hours, days, weeks, years later, the memory of one could instantly invoke the memory of the other, because they had been inextricably joined.
• Declan put his chin in his hand and looked back out the window; that, too, would be a good portrait. Perhaps it was just because she liked looking at him that she thought each pose would make a good one. A series. What a future that idea promised, nights upon nights like this, him sitting there, her standing here.