“The cunning old cow, thought Melena. She is trying that rarest of strategies, telling the truth, and making it sound plausible.”

“However in the world did her skin come green?" Nanny wondered, stupidly, for Melena blanched and Frex reddened, and the baby held her breath as if trying to turn blue to please them all. Nanny had to slap her to make her breath again.”

“When you can't die, she thought, everything sounds like a clock ticking.”

“What words she had thought to write on the face of the moon were washed away from her as she submerged, trying to disturb no one, nothing. Trying not so much as to interrupt a current, even trying not to shatter into soft-edged platelets the green moon in the reflection. Trying to sidestep having any influence at all, now and till the end of her life.”

“Even God used silence as a strategy.”

“She watched the sun bleed water out of the icicle. Warm and cold working together to make an icicle. Warm and cold anger working together to make a fury, a fury worthy enough to use as a weapon against the old things that still needed fighting.”

“She wasn't afraid of doing good or of resisting evil. She was merely afraid she might not be able to tell the difference.”