“She herself had certainly never been more alive. She felt electric. She would not have been surprised if sparks had come crackling out of the tips of her sober gloves.”

“She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her.”

“The fact that she was still alive felt wrong, out of balance. She didn't feel special, or protected, or gods-bound. She thought the gods had acted to protect the roan, and she had just been along for the ride. It was the roan who was special, not she.I should be dead, she thought. If she was dead, then all would have been settled. The warlord's men would have been satisfied to see her body swept away, the roan would have been safe from Beck's whip, the ghost of tyhe man she had killed could have gone to his rest. There was a rounding off - a justice - in her death. But alive, no one was satisfied and no one was safe.”

“In this town of towheaded drunks, [his daughter] would bear the weight of her difference, doled out in murmurs, taunts, and shoves. But now it occurred to Victor that she would suffer more than he ever had because, unlike him, she had been loved, and her punishment would come as a surprise.”

“If she had been born a hundred years later, she would very likely have been encouraged to be angry, told she had a right to express her anger and her sorrow and her bewilderment and her rage, and generally to disintegrate. These were not the expectations of her friends and family. Nothing could have been further from her expectations of herself. Instead, she threw herself into serving others.”

“But although she was with family and friends, she'd never felt more alone. She felt as if she'd lost a vital part of herself and she had - her heart.”