“She had smiled her way through the births andhad offered the new mothers the support and the medical care that they needed, but the momentshe’d sent them on their way, cutting that last umbilical cord between hospital and home, Lacyknew she was giving them the wrong advice. Instead of easy platitudes like Let them eat when theywant to eat and You can’t hold a baby too much, she should have been telling them the truth: Thischild you’ve been waiting for is not who you imagine him to be. You’re strangers now; you’ll bestrangers years from now.”

“Because the truth is that now that he’s here, she can’t imagine it any other way. Now that he’s here, she worries that crossing an entire ocean with someone between them might be something like torture.”

“Come here. I need to hold on to you." She felt the same way. And when there was no distance between them, it was like coming home.”

“Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.”

“She could have taken root. She wanted to be a Rose, somebody’s Rose, their Rose—and she would have been company for the flowers. She had new memories to give them, new people to tell them of, people who would help tend to them and keep them. But they warned her. They saved her. Hazel was nobody’s Rose. For better or for worse.”

“Who are you?" the woman said at last."Lyra Silver—""No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?" Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.”