“In the square below,’ said the Happy Prince, ‘there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.’‘I will stay with you one night longer,’ said the Swallow, ‘but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.’‘Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘do as I command you.’So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. ‘What a lovely bit of glass,’ cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. ‘You are blind now,’ he said, ‘so I will stay with you always.”

“Did you make the crawl of shame?"I open one eye and smirk, "What?"She pulls back the covers and plucks my t-shirt, "What is this?"I swallow and stretch and moan a little, "My…" I clear my throat, "Uhm...t-shirt."I make duck lips and watch her. She arches her eyebrow and shakes her head, pointing at my shirt and waggling her finger. "Nuh uh. No. I know all your dirty skeezy little orphan clothes and this shit isn’t yours." She bats her eyelashes blankly, "Spill bitch.”

“Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.'Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?'Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”

“She told me she has her eye on me, so I said, And what do you have your other eye on?”

“I--" She swallowed, perhaps summoning her courage, then continued, "I would not lie to you and say that I did not want this.""Me," he cut in peevishly. "You wanted me."She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she finally said, “I wanted you.”Part of him wanted to interrupt again, to remind her that she still wanted him, that it wasn’t and would never be in the past.“But I can’t have you,” she said quietly, “and because of that, you can’t have me.”And then, to his complete astonishment, he asked, “What if I married you?”

“Because of something she heard in school, Corrie asked her father what "sex sin" was while the two of them were riding on a train together. The father asked the little girl to carry his bag off the train. When she admitted that she could not do so, he said he would not be much of a father to expect this of her. The load was too heavy. This was the case, he said, with some knowledge. She needed to trust her father to give her knowledge at the right time.”