“her spine was the crease on a piece of paper, her bones no more than diagonal folds on a bit of origami”

“Peaseblossom-decorous, proper Peaseblossom-dropped her trousers to waggle her naked, pale bottom at the Stage Manager. Bertie laughed involuntarily, choked on her coffee, and nearly died as it came out her nose, but it was worth the searing pain in her nostrils to see the look on the Stage Manager's face. ”

“There should be more to love," said the earth, "than 'it did not kill me.' More than 'I survived it.”

“The collar had restrained his winds but not killed them. They uncoiled from behind the shadows, ready to surround her, to lift her up, to carry her away with only Ariel’s silk-clad arms wrapped about her to keep her from falling.Spirare, they whispered to her like an incantation. Breathe us in.Bertie didn’t mean to, but she inhaled, and everything inside her was a spring morning, a rose opening its petals to the sun, the light coming through the wavering glass of an old, diamond-paned window.Tendrils of wind reached for Bertie with a coaxing hand. Release him, and he will love you.”

“Ariel looked at her then, instead of the sky, instead of the horizon that surely beckoned to him. “Out of a thousand different winds, I think I can resist nine hundred and ninety-nine of them.Now she was the one unable to swallow. “And the last one?” "That one wrenches the beating heart from my chest, the blood from my veins, the marrow from my bones.” Grasping her hand, he brought it up to his face and rubbed it against his cheek. Pain radiated from his pale skin, from his eyes, from his lips when they grazed her knuckles. “You’ve two birds to do your bidding, my fair huntress, but I want you to choose me, to love me above all others, to make the pain in my soul worthwhile… or I would be free of you.”

“Ariel laughed and now her goose bumps had goose bumps.”

“You didn't just write the play, Bertie," Peaseblossom said suddenly. "You ordered the Players about, shouted, and threw an artistic hissy fit. Do you know what that makes you?" "A temperamental fusspot?" Mustardseed guessed. "Crazier than a bag full of crazy?" Moth said. "Close," Peaseblossom said. "It makes her a Director.”