“Within a few moments the last of day became the first of night, a magic as peculiar and welcome as any other.”

“Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.”

“He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing they hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.”

“Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.”

“When the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn’t any reclaiming it or revising it.”

“He was not so lucky. He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing the hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.”

“If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.”