“Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.”

“There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.”

“Pea was aware suddenly of how fragile her heart was, how much darkness was inside it, fighting, always, with the light. She did not like the rat. She would neverlike the rat, but she knew what she must do to save her own heart.”

“My heart, thought Edward, my heart is broken.”

“Look at me, he said to her. His arms and legs jerked. Look at me. You got your wish. I have learned how to love. And it’s a terrible thing. I’m broken. My heart is broken. Help me. The old woman turned and hobbled away. Come back, thought Edward. Fix me”

“And now you have a small map of the princess's heart (hatred, sorrow, kindness, empathy), the heart that she carried down inside her as she went down the golden stairs and through the kitchen and, finally, just as the sky outside the castle began to lighten, down into the dark dungeon with the rat and the serving girl.”

“There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart... And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and no where to put it.”