“We cannot know the future. All we can do is face it bravely. We should take heed of those we love and respect. But in the end, we make every decision alone.”

“With courage and hope, we can conquer our fears and do what we once believed impossible.”

“We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest. As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest. They grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.”

“We all accepted that this land was a gate to that other world, the realm of spirits and dreams and the Fair Folk, without any question. The place we grew up in was so full of magic that it was almost a part of everyday life - not to say you'd meet one of them every time you went out to pick berries, or draw water from your well, but everyone we knew had a friend of a friend who'd strayed too far into the forest, and disappeared; or ventured inside a ring of mushrooms, and gone away for a while, and come back subtly changed. Strange things could happen in those places. Gone for maybe fifty years you could be, and come back still a young girl; or away for no more than an instant by moral reckoning, and return wrinkled and bent with age. These tales fascinated us, but failed to make us careful. If it was going to happen to you, it would happen, whether you liked it or not.”

“But I believe we all have an inner goodness; a little flame that stays alight through the worst of trials.”

“For the others, it was still just a tale, like all the tales we told, night by night, tales comical and strange, tales heroic and awe-inspiring, the tales that formed the fabric of our spirits.”

“He and I…we share a bond. Not love, exactly. It goes beyond that. He is mine as surely as sun follows moon across the sky. Mine before ever I knew he existed. Mine until death and beyond.”