“In having a purpose. I could feel it hardening up my bones and thickening my blood. I felt older and smarter than anyone else I knew. I could do anything, anything at all.”

“I felt strong for once. I felt like I could do anything. Be anything.”

“I was so attracted to him I could have peed myself right there on the spot, but I hadn't done anything like that in a while. I was older now, and harnessed my feelings in moments like these by opening and closing my fists very rapidly.”

“When I first saw you, you were like a flood of sunshine. All the others wanted to kill you. They thought I was crazy. They laughed...."He means the other Shadow Men, Jenny thought."But I knew, and I watched you. You grew up and got more beautiful. You were so different from anything in my world. The others just watched, but I wanted you. Not to kill or to use up the way --the way they do with humans sometimes here. I needed you."[...]"I couldn't see anything else, couldn't hear anything else. All I could think about was you. I wouldn't let anyone else hurt you, ever. I knew I had to have you, no matter what happend. They said I was crazy with love.”

“I knew, even as we touched that I had never wanted anything more in all my life. All my crabbed cravings were as a cupful of pond water beside the vast ocean of longing I felt surging through me. My head swam; my eyes blurred. I burned from the inside out as if my blood and bones were consumed with liquid fire.”

“When I was fifteen, I felt it coming; now I was sixteen, and it hit. My feet had imperceptibly been set on a new path...there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it, or about anything. I was going to hell on a handcart, that was all, and I knew it and everyone around me knew it, and there it was.”