“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.”

“New teachers were just a part of life, for a few days after one arrived, squawks of interest were emitted from various corners, but then they died away as the teacher was absorbed like everyone else...before you knew it, the fresh ones seemed to have been teaching there forever too, or else they didn't last very long, and were gone before you'd gotten to know them.”

“Sometimes it seemed that she and rudy were two people attempting to tango, sweating and trying, long after the orchestra had grown tired, long after everyone else had gone home.”

“Windows were broken. Where not broken they were boarded up, had been for years: the rust from nailheads had written long, sad farewells down the salt-silvered planks.”

“The bottom line was that people who leaned too heavily on someone else were setting themselves up for a terrible fall, and they had no one to blame in the end but themselves for the hurt they suffered.Cork had learned the hard way.”

“I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die-No.Heather took a deep breath and tried to think about something else. Anything else.Like ponies.Ponies were a happy thought. They were nice and gentle and they never kidnapped people or strapped them to cold warehouse pillars.Ponies, ponies, ponies-"Tie him up by the girl and for God's sake don't kill him!" Clare's - er, Raven's - voice was like nails on a chalkboard as it floated into Heather's ears.Any attempts to think of ponies came to an abrupt halt.”