“Evil isn't beautiful on its own. You know?''Well, good people are sometimes ugly-' Blanche said at last.'I don't know about that. Not really,' Bear shook his head. 'If the good's there, and you look for it, you'll see it in some way.''I think Bear is right,' Rose said decidedly. 'Fairy tales teach you that. No one who's really good ever stays ugly. It's always a disguise.”

“Evil things often look beautiful. But that's because they've stolen the beauty from the good.... Evil isn't beautiful on its own.”

“Do you know, I always imagine that the subway trains are dragons,' Rose said to Bear as they clung to his coat for support in the swaying car. 'Tearing back and forth across the city in their underground caves, devouring people and spitting them out at random destinations.”

“Bear heard Rose in the background saying, 'Why thank you, Mr. Fish.''Good redhead. Helpful redhead,' Fish returned.”

“Can you imagine a princess who works as a counter girl in a fast-food restaurant? I'm sure there's one somewhere. Imagine if all the people who came in to place orders were to realize that their meal was served by a princess! I don't think most people could handle it.''I think it would be hard for a real princess to have to do menial work like that,' Blanche reflected. 'She might think it was beneath her.''Oh, but a real princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,' Rose objected. 'That would be one of the signs.”

“Every once in a while you just have to decide to do something very crazy and very right--just to dare yourself to live. I don't mean doing something stupid and destructive--just something fun and good and beautiful.”

“One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about.”