“It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.”

“But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.”

“It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed.”

“You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don’t know whether it will bring freedom or ruin, resolution or chaos. It might be paradise, or destruction. Take down the walls.”

“There's a place for everything and everyone, you know. That is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people have a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.”

“Still, the vivid green of the grass-where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt-seems out of place.This seems like a place where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.”

“Yes, the world was very strange. But you had to walk through. That was the trick. You had to keep walking through, always, with your chin held high, the way she had passed through the tunnels of the underworld, with only the dim light of the lumpen to guide her. That was the other trick, the other truth: Light would come to you from unexpected places.”