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“Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Wither

“Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love."

He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Sever

“Give me time"

"For you, always.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Sever

“There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage--a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Fever

“France is to me the heroine in the romance of all the nations of all time. This feeling was born in me years ago when I read how her noble sons had defended America in its cradle. Today I am proud that I am one of the millions who will come to save our heroine from the clutches of the villain from across the Rhine.”
― William Arthur Sirmon, That's War

“Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin
Des dames regardaient du haut de la montagne
Vous êtes si jolies mais la barque s'éloigne
Qui donc a fait pleurer les saules riverains

Or des vergers fleuris se figeaient en arrière
Les pétales tombés des cerisiers de mai
Sont les ongles de celle que j'ai tant aimée
Les pétales flétris sont comme ses paupières

Sur le chemin du bord du fleuve lentement
Un ours un singe un chien menés par des tziganes
Suivaient une roulotte traînée par un âne
Tandis que s'éloignait dans les vignes rhénanes
Sur un fifre lointain un air de régiment

Le mai le joli mai a paré les ruines
De lierre de vigne vierge et de rosiers
Le vent du Rhin secoue sur le bord les osiers
Et les roseaux jaseurs et les fleurs nues des vignes”
― Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools

“Helplessly I look at him. He will never be just Rowan again. I will never be just Rhine. Everything has been tampered with.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Sever

“One afternoon, as Rose lay in a sweaty daze, teetering on the edge of consciousness, she made me swear that I would look after Linden, and I promised I would. I didn't expect to keep that promise, but maybe my,lie will at least do him some good in the meantime.”
― Lauren Destefano

“This is my story. These things are my past, and I will not allow them to be washed away. I will find a way to have them back.”
― Lauren DeStefano

“All along the river, the people I spoke to were hard-working and deeply attached to the mental security blanket of having a decent house, clean car and steady job. They were relatively wealthy, but at the same time quite ambivalent about wealth, and disdainful of anything which smacked of excessive consumption. Family was important, but having expensive jewellery or a fancy haircut usually were not. People considered it essential to be productive and efficient, but would also think it an outrage to be expected to reply to a work email on the weekend. From Rotterdam to Ludwigshafen, they counted pennies and returned empty bottles, avoided running up debts, and were careful to save for rainy days. Food was enjoyed but unimportant, and a 'salad' was anything covered with mayonnaise, preferably fried first.”
― Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps

“It was a buoyant place under a clear sky, everything in the air whispered that the plains were far behind and the sunlight sent a flicker and a flash of reflections glancing up from the snow; and two more invisible lines had been crossed and important ones: the accent had changed and wine cellars had taken the place of beerhalls. Instead of those grey mastodontic mugs, wine-glasses glittered on the oak. (It was under a vista of old casks in a Weinstube that I settled with my diary till bedtime.) The plain bowls of those wine-glasses were poised on slender glass stalks, or on diminishing pagodas of little globes, and both kinds of stem were coloured: a deep green for Mosel and, for Rhenish, a brown smoky gold that was almost amber. When horny hands lifted them, each flashed forth its coloured message in the lamplight. It is impossible, drinking by glass in those charmingly named inns and wine-cellars, not to drink too much. Deceptively and treacherously, those innocent-looking goblets hold nearly half a bottle and simply by sipping one could explore the two great rivers below and the Danube and all Swabia, and Franconia too by proxy, and the vales of Imhof and the faraway slopes of Würzburg: journeying in time from year to year, with draughts as cool as a deep well, limpidly varying from dark gold to pale silver and smelling of glades and meadows and flowers.”
― Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

“[When testing psychic abilities of normal people who claimed no psychic powers, J.B Rhine found that] success rate deteriorates if you undertake prolonged experimentation. As with telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition experiments, J.B Rhine observed that this decline effect reflected the subject's loss of interest. [...] And as with other ESP experiments, the degree of belief in your powers can prove significant. Rhine found that sceptics again scored below what you would expect from chance alone.”
― Craig Hamilton-Parker, Your Psychic Powers: A Beginner's Guide