“To say that Richard Mayhew was not very good at heights would be perfectly accurate, but would fail to give the full picture; it would be like describing the planet Jupiter as bigger than a duck. Richard hated clifftops, and high buildings; somewhere not far inside of him was the fear – the start, utter, silently screaming terror – that if he got too close to the edge, then something would take over, and he would find himself walking to the edge of a clifftop and then he would just step off into space. It was as if he could not entirely trust himsels, and that scared Richard more than the simple fear of falling ever could. So he called it vertigo, and hated it and himself, and kept away from high places.”

“Blue Duck could never avoid a moment of fear, when his father's eyes became the eyes of a snake. He choked off his insult -- he knew that if he spoke, he might, in an instant, find himself fighting Buffalo Hump. He had seen it before, with other warriors. Someone would say one word too many, would fail to see the snake in his father's eyes, and the next moment Buffalo Hump would be pulling his long bloody knife from between the other warrior's ribs. Blue Duck waited. He knew that it was not a day to fight his father.”

“The acrobat practices: He steps on the edge of a chair and leaps to the floor, feeling the rush as the air flares up his face as he falls. Then he sets himself on something higher, like a table then jumps. He scales a ladder to the ceiling, climbs a tree, pole, watchtower. He keeps increasing the height until no one sees him and the fear to jump leaves him completely, layer by layer [. . .] The acrobat imagines there is a highest possible point in the sky where if he were to fall from it the fall would never end.”

“Who else, when we stepped to the line in Torino, was going to be so mentally tough? Who else would have proven to himself that he could do anything he set out to do? In a sport that was always one tick away from being entirely out of control, who else would have done everything he could to take charge of the things he could-and should- control to put himself in position to excel?”

“She loved him, more than she could ever find words for, but this love he felt for her was not quite the same. It wasn't so much stronger, as more demanding, more insistent. As though he feared he would lose that which he had finally won.”

“Trust ran both ways. How could he ask her to trust him when he hardly trusted her?He would trust her, in her love, in her strength, in her decency and fortitude.And when the time came, he would find the strength in himself.”