“Anyway, don't they have girls your age down there?" Talon shrugged. "Yeah...but none of them ever sprayed me with eye-poison.”

“... "Keep your eyes on the prize," although I think he should have also said "Go after the prize," too; and maybe that's why prizes ever came his way, because all he ever did was look at them.”

“The eternally sleeping princess, thinks Cam. But I shall free you from those poisoned brambles that surround your heart. And then you will have no choice but to love me.”

“Your hair looks funny," Lief said, as soon as the Ugloids left. "It stands straight up!"No," said Nick, intensely irritated, "It's hanging straight down."Lief just gave him an upside-down shrug. "Up is down in China and you're part-Chinese.”

“I will be keeper of your secret," Talon told the silent grave of the forgotten inventor. "I will be the one who remembers why we forget.”

“Picking locks was not a skill he had ever cultivated, but he persisted day after day, turning the tip of his talon into different ways of approaching a keyhole. He never tired, and he ever gave up...because if there was any justice in the universe, he wouldn't be trapped here forever.”

“Perhaps, thought Talon, there was a path in between. A way to shed their ignorance without losing their souls.”