“It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.”

“It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.”

“Well, finally, once you become an orphan, you're an orphan till the day you die. I keep having the same dream. I'm seven years old and an orphan again. All alone, with no adults around to take care of me. It's evening, and the light is fading, and night is pressing in. It's always the same. In the dream I always go back to being seven years old. Software like that you can't exchange once it's contaminated.”

“Being scared isn't the problem. It's not running away that's the hard part.”

“That doesn't sound like civil war to me," said Gaylen, turning back to his book with a smile. "It only sounds silly.""Of course it's silly," said the Prime Minister impatiently. "But a lot of serious things start silly.”

“Everything's possible when you're seven years old." She sighed. "But then you hit an age where you decide it's cooler not to believe in anything at all. [...] It's called being grown-up.”