“If the other novice wizards on the row hadn't broken into Raeshaldis's rooms, pissed on her bed and written WHORE and THIEF on the walls, she probably would have been killed on the night of the full moon.”

“I realized my room was just next to hers.It was a mirror image of her room, but completely different in all of the ways that couldn't be seen. This shower hadn't washed away our pretenses last night; we hadn't slept together, curled around each other in this bed. These walls hadn't been filled with the sounds of her coming apart beneath me. This desk wasn't broken from a late-morning quickie.”

“She would say 'Bucket moon'he would answer 'Ladle moon.'Night after night sky revealed abitten moon, a butcher's moon,an apple moon, a thief's moon,a rabbit---'Rabbit moon?''Don't you see it?''I used to chase rabbits,' she had said,her voice sweet and tired.”

“If you are not a lady, then you are a whore. You do not want to know what would happen to a human whore within these walls." He seemed tired as he said it, as if he'd been there, done that, and hadn't had a good time.”

“Our room has two beds. If this had been a movie, [the hotel] would have been full so we would have had to share a bed. Why doesn't stuff like that happen in real life?”

“Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.”