“I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.”

“It's funny, he said, have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?”

“Inside me, there is an organ more important than my heart. Although you can't see it, I feel it going right through my head and down to my legs, and I know that it exists inside me. It's the one that lets me stand up and walk forward. So that I can walk forward, without ever trembling. If I stopped here I feel like it would break...My soul would break. Even more than if my heart stops beating, to me that is the most important. Even if I become senile and my back gets bent, I still have to walk forward.”

“This is my family, and the noise around me is soothing in a way it hasn't been in quite a long time. That's mostly my doing, I know, given my self-imposed exile in the Land of Sorrow. But hearing the overlapping voices and laughter, seeing the bright eyes and smiles, does more for me than I thought it could.”

“When you warned me that you would test me from time to time, I thought you meant spiking my food. But it seems there is more than one way to poison a person’s heart, and it doesn’t even require a meal.”

“He [Ranger] peeled my [Stephanie] clothes off and wrangled me into bed. And then suddenly he was inside me. He once told me that time spent with him would ruin me for all other men. When he said it, I thought it was an outrageous threat. I no longer though it outrageous.”