“It seems to me,’ said Philippa prosaically, ‘that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford’s protection than without it.”

“In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.”

“Why we should believe in wolf children seems somehow easier to understand than the ways we distinguish between what is human and what is animal behavior. In making such distinctions we run the risk of fooling ourselves completely. We assume that the animal is entirely comprehensible and, as Henry Beston has said, has taken form on a plane beneath the one we occupy. It seems to me that this is a sure way to miss the animal and to see, instead, only another reflection of our own ideas.”

“The bonds of silence and protection run deeper, for the moment, than his trust in me.”

“There are more kinds of hurt than physical ones, hurts that run ever deeper and leave bigger scars, and not even Nick could protect me from himself.”

“Risk is the universe's way of pushing us to become more than what we are. Risk is faith at the edge. Risk is the pulsating nature of life.”