“The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven.”

“Her mother had once told her that one could run away from home, from husband, from children, from trouble, but it was impossible to run away from oneself. "You always have to take yourself with you," she said. And now, bending towards her mother, Hope wondered if in death you were finally able to run away from yourself. This might be death's gift. She knew that the thought wasn't terribly profound, but she was moved by the notion of completion and of escape.”

“She was no closer to determining who might want her dead. There were just too many possibilities.”

“Dorothy did not feel nearly so bad as you might think a little girl who had been so suddenly whisked away from her own country and set down in the middle of a strange land”

“This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we". ”

“Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee.Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle?Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks.Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone.Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.”