“When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...]You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?”

“Told you," said Mick. "Things comin' together. We set off lookin' for the Utz kids an' find a tree full o' everybody. That's magic, too.""It's like a story.""Same thing. The universe don't like plot. Story is magic's way o' telling the universe to sod off.""That's good then, right?" said Scott. After this episode with Emily, he was ready for some optimism. "Magic wants us all to live happily ever after.""Not necessarily," Mick answered. "Magic likes a good tragedy, too.”

“Woah,' I said, blocking the doorway. 'You can't come in here. This is the girls' room.' Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded dumb. Dumb, I thought and maybe even wrong.You...are a boy, aren't you?' I asked. 'I mean, don't take that the wrong way or anything -' J.Lo is a boy, yes.' I let that go.So...you Boov have boys and girls...just like us?' Of course,' said J.Lo. 'Do not be ridicumlous.' I smiled a wan little smile. 'Sorry.' The Boov have seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, girlboy, boygirl, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.' I had absolutely no response to this.”

“I'm half white," I said, folding my arms."Hrrm. Which half?"I blinked. "Uh...dunno. Let's just say it's from the waist down." Chief Shouting Bear nodded. "Deal. I only hate your legs.”

“Ohh,' said the girl with a sad tilt of her head.It was a response Sejal would hear a lot in the following weeks and which she would eventully come to understand meant, 'Ohh, India, that must be so hard for you, and I know because I read this book over the summer called The Fig Tree (which is actually set in Pakistan but I don't realize there's a difference) about a girl whose parents sell her to a sandal maker because everyone's poor and they don't care about girls there, and I bet that's why you're in our country even, and now everyone's probably being mean to you just because of 9/11, but not me although I'll still be watching you a little too closely on the bus later because what if you're just here to kill Americans?'There was a lot of information encoded in that one vowel sound, so Sejal missed most of it at first.”

“I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with ... G.""Sausages.”

“There were grandfather clocks and these things that were sort like half-grandfather clocks, and so many cuckoo clocks I suddenly felt like I was trapped in some weird pop-up book for little kids. It scared me so bad I just about had a stroke. That would have been pretty pathetic to die of a stroke at sixteen. Behind me there was this one particular cuckoo clock that looked about three thousand years old. This thing flew through the clock’s doors, and before I even realized what had happened, my hand shot up and broke it off. When I opened my hand, I was holding this totally deformed, premature-looking half chicken. It was maybe the evilest thing I’d ever seen in my life. For some reason I started kind of choking it. Now, I know that’s almost serial-killer nuts or whatever, and I’m not asking you to try to understand – I swear I’m not – but that’s what I did. I choked the thing between my thumb and forefinger as if my life depended on it.”