“But memories were fragile and not to be trusted. They were a weight that Faolin did not need to carry with him when he set out that morning. Things of the past, like the fragile boy he had been, had no place on a man’s journey towards his future.”

“The unreality of the past weeks lifted like a fog, but its residue remained. All of the past is like that, but most especially the parts that are out of the ordinary.”

“They heard rumors of other robot ponies [...] who were left to themselves after their mistresses and masters had grown weary of them, falling into a stupor before their hydraulic limbs squealed and locked, freezing up forever while their circuit boards fizzled and died. It sounded to Jenn that they had died of broken hearts— but to everyone else, they were just defective.”

“Magic will still be here [...] just as it always has been. Even if no one believes it.”

“A thing is only as great as the amount a person is willing to risk for it. If you are not willing to risk anything, then the thing mustn't be so great at all.”

“How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else?”

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”