“Omaha is no place for anybody.”

“Fairyland is a very Scientifick place. We subscribe to all the best journals.”

“There is a place, September, oh, very far from Pandemonium. A place where it is always autumn, where there is always cider and pumpkin pie, where leaves are always orange and fresh-cut wood is always burning and it is always, just always Halloween.”

“A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.”

“Oh, Marya Morevna! Do you know how the church-folk call me, me and my daughter Gamayun, when they paint us on their ceilings? They call us archangels, and say that we live in heaven, where no vine of sorrow or memory grows. That is where I sent you, not to heaven—tscha! I know nothing of that place. But to a place like the ceiling of a church.”

“They found themselves striding into the herald's square of a place called Mercutio before they could discuss whether it was nightingales or sparrows that sang so prettily in the woods.”

“When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.”