“She hoped Smoke was wrong about people being unknowable. She hoped that she could crack herself open like a nut and know herself, at least. Then she'd be able to start figuring out everybody else.”

“She could not trust herself to hope—but without hope, she realized, she had no reason to go on.”

“She was afraid of not being able to pull herself out of the dream world, never waking up, never knowing what really happened, never realizing her goals, her hopes, her dreams.”

“Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for.”

“Christ on crackers, she'd barely gotten over finding out about the others: if she had to start believing aliens were real, too, she was finished. she'd stab herself in the heart with a blue pencil just see if she didn't."-Corinne D'Alessandro”

“She had no illusions of becoming a master knife fighter. This wasn't the Realms, where a thought delivered result. But she also knew she'd giver herself a better chance. And in life, at least in her new life, chances were the best she could hope for. They were like her rocks. Imperfect& surprising & maybe better in the long run than certainties. Chances, she thought, were life.”