“What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?”

“A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?”

“What makes a good book? Scholars and critics have been debating that question for decades. I like books that touch my head and my heart at the same time.”

“We are all monsters" Hannah said. "Because we are letting it happen." She said it not as if she believed it but as she were to repeat something she had heard before.”

“What was can never be again.”

“I must fill myself with sorrow if I am to give you what you want.”

“But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself. I cannot remember. She's been shorn of memory as brutally as she'd been shorn of her hair, without permission, without reason... Gone, all gone, she thought again wildly, no longer even sure what was gone, what she was mourning.”