“...singing ballads whose words had never known paper but lived only on the rasping edge of their own voices.”

“It was the only lullaby she would ever sing, and it was sung in Hell.”

“In truth, she had claim to no nationality. Her papers were all forgeries, and her accents -all except one, in her first language, which was not of human origin- were all fakes.”

“Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.”

“She was a girl and she was a queen and back in the mists she was a woman who had seized the moon from the sky and drunk its light so that she would never die. And she never had.”

“...and she felt the words come from some iron place within her that hadn't existed an hour ago. She didn't speak loudly, but there was such a change in her voice. Coming from that iron place, it was heavy and true; it wasn't persuasive, or desperate, or antagonistic. It just was.”

“Once upon a time, [...]. There was a world that was perfectly made and full of birds and striped creatures and lovely things like honey lilies and star tenzing and weasels—[...] And this world already had light and shadow, so it didn't need any rouge stars to come and save it, and it had no use for bleeding suns or weeping moons, either, and most important, it had never known war, which is a terrible and wasteful thing that no world needs. It had earth and water, air and fire, all four elements, but it was missing the last element. Love.[...] And so this paradise was like a jewel box without a jewel. There it lay, day after day of rose-colored dawns and creature sounds and strange perfumes, and waited for lovers to find it and fill it with their happiness. The end.[...]The story is unfinished. The world is still waiting.”