“You presume to name those who have no name. We are pandemonium and disaster. We are the dancing, gibbering horror of the world.”

“Do you really want to know where we come from?" she said. "In every century, in every country, they'll call us something different. They'll say we're ghosts, angels, demons, elemental spirits, and giving us a name doesn't help anybody. When did a name change what someone is?”

“When did a name ever change what someone is?”

“The way Lillian says it is hungry, like she’s waiting for something to be revealed, and I wonder if maybe that’s the real difference between us—that when she pulls back the curtain and stares into the blackness behind it, it’s just one more way of testing herself. Like some game you can never win, because even if you face all the shocking realities and the horrors of the world, once you’ve seen that kind of awfulness, you can never un-see it. You have to carry it around with you forever.”

“Epochs later, the curtains grew dusty and brittle, the deep, vicious colour of a bruise. The floorboards creaked and we were civilized. We were no longer the wild, ravening voices of the world, howling our shame and indignation at the sky.”

“Don’t you ever just have those days where even if you don’t really like someone, you might as well hang out with them because right then, it’s better than being alone?”

“People make decisions, and maybe you don't always agree, but those choices are still their own.”