“Mary bring out your umbrella - The sun shines down on this fine, fine dayBut the ashes raining down foreverAre going to turn your hair to gray.Mary keep your oars a-steadySail away on the rising floodKeep your candle at the readyRed tides can't be told from blood.- "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play”

“...if you are one tardy away from missing out on a big competition, you should probably make your coffee at home.”

“Step on a crack , you'll break your mama's back.Step on a stone, you'll end up all alone.Step on a stick, you're bound to get the Sick.Watch where you tread, you'll bring out all the dead. - A common children's playground chant, usually accompanied by jumping rope or clapping.”

“-"your nocturna will never take another human, not for all the length of time in the universe and beyond. Your nocturna is wedded to your soul. Some even say"..."that it is the nocturni who carry souls into the Shadow World when we die, where they will keep watch over them and keep them safe forever. Some say that is nocturni's ultimate purpose.”

“Everything looks beautiful. The Book of Shhh says that deliria alters your perception, disables your ability to reason clearly, impairs you from making sound judgments. But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.”

“I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing—is run.”

“It's funny how you can know your friends so well, but you still end up playing the same games with them.”