“Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.”

“When you're on your own, you look for signs. Sometimes you make them up, sometimes they're actually there, but most of the time you can't tell the difference from the two.”

“Tourists, a lot of them, wearing unfamiliar faces. There is something subtly different about them, like they're a different species...They're related to us like Dove is related to the water horses.”

“Do they hate the idea of her, because she's different from them, and that in this difference there might be some sort of inferiority or superiority that is hers or theirs, that in the end threatens the potential happiness of everyone?”

“What was destiny? What was the power that shaped the patterns and attempted to enforce them? God? Should she be raging at God - or begging Him to let her son live and to spare her from the life of a cripple? Or was the power behind destiny merely a natural mechanism, a force no different in origin from gravity or magnetism?”

“The sound of words as they're said is always different from the sound they make when they're heard, because the speaker hears some of the sound from the inside.”