“I always wanted an eccentric daughter . I just never realized how well my evil plans were working.”

“Are you really going to work in that?" Maura asked.Blue looked at her clothing. It involved a few thin layering shirts, including one she had altered using a method called shredding. "What's wrong with it?"Maura shrugged. "Nothing. I always wanted an eccentric daughter. I just never realised how well my evil plans were working.”

“But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.”

“I had no weapons. No plan. Nothing but my blood and my hands. They were coming, and there were more of them than I'd realized.”

“As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.”

“My daughter," I said blankly. "I see. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thoughtit took a man, as well as a woman, to make a child. Is this infant's father tobe a crab, or a seagull maybe? Or were you planning to shipwreck some likelysailor on my doorstep, so I can make convenient use of him?”