“She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.”

“she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her.”

“A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.”

“In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.”

“She'd lost her fury, somewhere, as they'd talked. She didn't feel it anymore. She wished she did, because she preferred it to the emptiness that had settled in its place.”

“she was such a bad actress. she never said her lines rite, it was something perverse in her nature. and wat was her line anyway?”