“Talking won't change it. But sometimes it was what she wanted most, to tell someone; often, though, she just wanted to escape those horrid feelings, to escape herself, so there was no pain, no fear, no ugliness.”

“As for the fan, she agreed that it was a most amusing trifle: just what she would wish to buy for herself, if it had not been so excessively ugly!”

“What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?”

“I'll tell you why it matters," she hisses. "It matters because if you hadn't escaped,my brother would be alive right now.And I want to make sure no other filthy street con assigned to the labor camps escapes the system-so that this scenario won't play out ever again."I laugh in her face.The pain in my leg only fuels my anger. "Oh,is that all you're worried about? A bunch of renegade Trial takers who managed to escape their deaths? Those ten-year-olds are a dangerous bunch,yeah?”

“More and more often these days days, though, Holly found herself thinking that perhaps what God wanted was not to be feared or obeyed or even to be worshiped -but maybe God just wanted to be wondered about.”

“Healing's not always natural, she says. Healing's not always the way a body wants to go. Sometimes the body wants to run. Sometimes it can't think of anything but what might stop the pain. And though stopping the pain's important if you want a body healing, it isn't the whole. Sometimes that just keeps you broke.”