“Maybe the girl would get strong enough to withstand an ink exchange with one of the chosen faeries. If not, he could always give her to one of the weaker fey. It seemed a shame to waste a lovely broken toy.”

“If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.”

“She needed facts. Facts were bricks. Maybe she could build herself a wall with them, too, one tall and wide and strong enough to keep her alive when he was gone.”

“I'd always admired writers. I'd always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences could pull broken bits together.”

“When Conrad Fisher told a girl he loved her, he meant it. A girl could believe in that. A girl could maybe even bet her whole life on it.”

“Could he love this girl the way she deserved? He could love her with everything that he was, and still it wouldn't be enough. He would fuck up somehow, because that is what he did.”