“Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”

“But Laila has decided that she will not be crippled by resentment. Mariam wouldn’t want it that way. ‘What’s the sense?’ she would say with a smile both innocent and wise. ‘What good is it, Laila jo?’ And so Laila has resigned herself to moving on. For her own sake, for Tariq’s, for her children’s. And for Mariam, who still visits Laila in her dreams, who is never more than a breath or two below her consciousness. Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”

“A person can do incredible things if he or she has enough hope.”

“She didn’t quite know how to translate faces; so she wondered about Jerry, but that’s all she could do.”

“Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.”

“How about we just be Haven and Carmine?” she suggested. “We don’t know the ending, but we can always hope for the best.”“I like that,” he said. “Besides, there’s a reason we don’t know how the story ends.”“Why?”“Because it doesn’t.”