“She could keep her silence, it was evident, as energetically as she could talk.”

“She's my best friend, and I know she means well, but as she talks I'm mentally calculating all the ways I could silence her. I'm bigger than her... I wonder if I could use my straw for some sort of MacGyver inspired weapon.”

“She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.”

“She could not be complying, she dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence.”

“She could talk. If she was a sphinx she could have talked, if she was a stone she could have talked. I wondered when she'd get tired and leave. Even after I stopped listening it was like being battered with tiny pingpong balls.”

“Rachel could not believe what she was hearing. Accepting that her magic worked was a huge step, yet she was speaking to the evidence. But to be offered the power to rule the world? She wasn't sure her career in exercise instruction had prepared her for this.”