“I knew you'd be pleased. But I beg of you: don't write things like 'The fox was orally fixated all afternoon.' There are so many foreign words in your stories, they'd make a four or five-year-old drop stone dead. Hungarian, understood?”

“Five years ago I was a four-stone apology...Today I am two separate gorillas!”

“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

“Tegus, I'm leaving this book behind for you, so you will know the why of it all, and maybe you'll forgive me, or maybe you'll think me false and reprehensible. You'd be justified. I couldn't stand the thought of your reading all my words unless I knew for certain that I'd never have to face you again, so please don't look for me. If you read the book in its entirety, you'll know for truth who is Lady Saren. And I guess you'll also know that I'm a silly girl who writes down every word you said to me.”

“Year after year. "Please don't make me go [to school]""You have to go," Kim would say. "It's a new school, make a new start." "Sticks and stones." from Chip. Words will only kill you.”

“Welcome, Anne. I thought you'd come today. You belong to the afternoon so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew it. But they don't...and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together that don't belong.”