“Unintended consequences, he thought miserably.He was angry at his anger, the way it surged upand took over.”

“The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore. Anger is. And when anger is the boss, you get unintended consequences.”

“His sympathy made tears spring to Lina's eyes. Doon looked startled for a moment, and then he took a step toward her and wrapped his arms around her. He gave her a squeeze so quick and tight that it made her cough, and then it made her laugh. She realized all at once that Doon--thin, dark-eyed Doon with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket and his good heart--was the person that she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend.”

“Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her.”

“Wouldn't it be strange, she thought, to have a blue sky? But she liked the way it looked. It would be beautiful - a blue sky.”

“A person who thought he knew everything simply didn’t understand how much there was to know.”

“Goats and oxen, pulling carts in from the field, left their big, smelly plops all over. these got cleaned up eventually-someone came and scraped them into buckets and took them away-but often this didn't happen until halfway through the morning, and people had to step carefully until then and breathe in that powerful smell.”