“Sydney! Stop. Think of something else. Conjugate Latin verbs. Recite the periodic table.”

“The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.”

“The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.”

“No proper princess would come out looking for dragons," Woraug objected."Well I'm not a proper princess then!" Cimorene snapped. "I make cherries jubillee and I volunteer for dragons, and I conjugate Latin verbs-- or at least I would if anyone would let me. So there!”

“Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.”

“But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.”