“If you have time to judge another person's life, you're not paying attention to yours.”

“Little deer, I've stuffed all the world's diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs.”

“Don't waste your prayers on the past, when the future is where you're going.”

“He may say he is different. He may want to be different. He may even go so far as to become your lover. But he'll always feel guilty and dirty. He'll be ashamed to be seen with you and try to blame you for his own desires. He'll claim you seduced him or that you are somehow irresistible because you're Haldiim. If the two of you are discovered together, he'll press charges to save himself. That's how Cadeleonian men are.”

“I am what the water gave me, / a smoke-ring in a jar, / the braided rope / my ladder-to-the-light, / my shivering bird heart / caught”

“Now that I have this piglet talisman... who knows what I might find the poor judgment to do?”

“To fear what you do not understand is to mistake ignorance for safety.”