“So...you faze out, hear voices, and blame your tempered outbursts on a fictional creature living in...” he looked down at my stomach, “your belly.”“Precisely. The boy catches on quick.”

“A boy is a magical creature - you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart.”

“You have two voices, one that only you hear, and another that you speak out loud with, so others hear you. Regardless of what you actually say with your mouth, what matters is what your inner voice says, for this is the one you listen to the most.”

“Six silent people in a room got me to thinking about the voice we hear in our heads when we read, the universal narrator's voice you may well be hearing right now. Whose voice *is* it you're hearing? It's not your own, is it? I didn't think so. It never is. So I posed the question out loud...”"...When you read a book, whose voice is it you hear inside your head?" "It's certainly not my own", said Harj, and the others chimed in with the same claim."Then whose it?”

“When he reached out with both huge hands to grasp me, I ducked under them and stepped forward, smoothly pulling my knife out of my sleeve. Then, with one quick swipe, I sliced him across the belly. I wasn't certain enough of his anatomy to try stabbing him in the heart. As big as he was, his ribs were probably as thick as my wrist. He stared at me in utter amazement. Then he looked down at the entrails that came boiling out of the gaping wounds that ran from hip to hip across his lower belly."I think you dropped something there, Grul," I suggested.He clutched at his spilling entrails with both hands, a look of consternation on his brutish face. "'Grat cut Grul's belly," he said. "Make Grul's insides fall out.""Yes, I noticed that. Did you want to fight some more, Grul? I think you could spend your time better by sewing yourself back together. You're not going to be able to move very fast with your guts tangled around your feet.""'Grat is not nice," he accused mournfully, sitting down and holding his entrails in his lap.”

“Michael!” Oliver’s voice came faint through the front door. “Something you should see, my boy! Look out your windows!”“Trap,” Shane said instantly, and reached out to grab Michael’s arm as he walked by. “Don’t, man.”“What’s he going to do? Make faces at me?”