“Which would be at about shoulder height. Apparently, in Pada’s search for her path, the Saints needed to be sure that they had nothing important to say that lay toward either the ceiling or the floor, or she would render them mute.”

“I had come to discover that "safe" was an illusion, a pretense that adults wrapped around their children- and sometimes themselves- to make the world seem comfortable. I had discovered that under that thin cover of let's-pretend, monsters and nightmares lay, and that not all of them came from places like the moonroads or the nightling cities. Some of the monsters were people we knew. People we thought we could trust.”

“I have never yet figured out what to do about good advice that you get, and that you know right away would help you, but that you cannot follow.”

“How did you do it?" he wanted to know. "Enchanted arrows? Spell of exploding flesh? Rain of fire? No, not that. The worm would be cooked and we would be eating it. Wand of destruction? Oh, a wand of destruction would be a find, fine thing." He turned to me. "Speak up, girl." I hit him with your skillet. A lot.”

“May we see our paths clearly, may we follow them truly, and may the roads we walk always bring us back together safely from wherever we have wandered, to wherever we dare call home.”

“I would rather be right and die than be wrong and kill.”

“Adventures are only interesting once you've lived to see the end of them. Before that, they are nothing but fear, and being too cold or too hot or too wet or too hungry, and getting hurt.”