“Even Ayar's back tells the right time twice a day, and it was my turn to be right.”

“I had never seen her this way before, and I wondered why until I realized it was the tattoo; I saw, finally, there was magic at work here that was darker and deeper than I had imagined, that the tattoo was like putting a pair of spectacles on a child with poor vision. I stared up at the camp hill, my heart in my throat, and wondered what everything would look like, now that I could see.”

“Then you are the bird, and the bird, and the bird.”

“This is what happens when you take a step: you are moving closer to what you want.”

“I smiled back and I thoughthow incredible that was, that they would find the time to smile. There was goodness in the world still, even if you couldn’t always see it.”

“You belong to me now, and I'll be back to get yo after your twenty-first birthday, when the time is right. No one else can touch you until then and I'll always be around to make sure.”

“In fact, there was a sort of satisfaction and pride in knowing that Kiki was his. Other men could look, they could envy, they could even covet, but she was going home with him. Every. Time.”