“His eyes look too bright, the way the do in people who are in love, people who are enraged, and people who are completely bonkers.”

“Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.”

“Refills are free,” the waitress tells us with a frown, like she’s hoping we’re not the kind of people who ask for endless refills. I am already pretty sure we are exactly those people.”

“Reading about Bordertown was the first time I saw people like me in speculative fiction. Messed-up kids, making messsed-up choices. I couldn't be a magician's apprentice or a pig keeper who might or might not be a king's son or a princess with a prophecy hanging over my head. But I could, maybe, somehow, be part of a community of artists who loved magic.”

“I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstacy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they trash in your hands as though with an excess of passion.”

“Changing is what people do when they have no options left.”

“There are dog people and cat people.”