“Oh, but I was an idiot. Wanting to be whatever magic she waited for, when I had no magic - only darkness or death to give. But it seemed in that one instant, when she turned to discover what was behind her, that I could have brought happiness to at least one mortal. Me and my dreams of goodness. I had always been a fool for them.”

“I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.”

“But even to him I used to go only when such a spell came, and my dreams had reached such happiness that I needed, instantly and infallibly, to embrace people and the whole of mankind - for which I had to have available at least one really existing person. Anton Antonych, however, could be visited only on Tuesdays (his day), and consequently my need to embrace the whole of mankind always had to be adjusted to a Tuesday.”

“I realized then that they would not know when I was gone, just as they could not know how heavily I hovered in a particular room. Buckley had talked to me and I had talked back. Even if I hadn't thought I'd been talking to him. I had. I became manifest in whatever way they wanted me to be.And there she was, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose to tell it, even to one person at a time.”

“...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”

“She swallows, then adds in a horrified whisper, "I wanted you to make Jason Kim bleed. A lot."I blink, surprised. And pleased, though I know I shouldn't be. I'm supposed to be turning Ariel away from her dark side, not indulging her taste for bloodshed. But then, I didn't really believe she had one. She seems so good to me. At least, most of the time. When she isn't trying to commit murder/suicide by driving a car off the road or proclaiming her undying hatred.”