“We're all family--the only family we've got. It doesn't have to be blood.”

“I started to sway Lexi again when I realized she was quiet. Waiting. Both of us paused on the cusp of the unknown. I couldn't go backward or even retrace my own steps, let alone Xanda's. I could only go forward. The threads of time weren't unraveling but weaving into a tapestry -- a future, and a hope. The only way to discover was to step into it.”

“I thought of Shelley in the hospital, how she said sometimes sadness only looked like anger and judgment. Maybe fear did too.”

“Maybe that's why he watched over all of us--because of the ones he couldn't protect, he took care of the ones he could.”

“Ask no questions, I tell no lies.”

“I thought of what pride would look like, a jowly old guy in a smoking jacket. Vanity was a tall, beautiful woman with a face like a mask. Envy was a treasure-hoarding dragon, dainty and diabolical. As I sketched in the dragon's face, I gave her eyebrows like mine, my turtle necklace around its scaly neck. Xanda drew them as cliffs and valleys, irrevocably linked pride as a mountain, envy as a valley, hating its lowness and longing to reach, overtake, conquer. She drew vanity as a volcano with an abyss at its core.”

“It's the grit that makes the pearl.”