“Success would come only at the expense of losing her cool, at the risk of turning intosomeone she did not want to be.”

“She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.”

“A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.”

“This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren't pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but assoon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her lifemiserable.”

“And still, what a risk he'd taken. The woman was like an amateur car bomb: you never knew when she would explode or who she would take down with her when she did.”

“The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.”