“Nude descending a staircase headless,not knowing where she is goingbut brave because all dreams lack conclusions and she is not enlisted to an ending.”

“All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”

“Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”

“She had debated, in the frivolity of the beginning, whether to build a hole or a tower; a hole, because she was fond of hobbits, or a tower — well, a tower for many reasons, but chiefly because she liked spiral staircases.”

“It was just like him, she thought; with him, a happy ending was always a foregone conclusion. But such was the power of his faith that when she was with him; she found herself believing in happy endings, too.”

“That was how she saw the storyteller for the last time - in an absolutely silent world, in a staircase. He'd hit his target.When she fell into darkness, she knew that she would never see him again.She'd love him to the very end.”