“...and again she wished for Sherwood, and the dappled roof of leaves that never weighed upon her. She pulled her scarf closer around her and thought, I would rather live in a hut in the woods; a hut like the one of my first memories, with a clean-swept dirt floor, and a brown-eyed boy watching me from behind his mother's skirts as I watched him from behind mine.”

“That's when I started thinking about my sister.I thought about the time when she and her friends painted my fingernails, and how that was okay because my brother wasn't there. And the time she let me use her dolls to make up plays or let me watch whatever I wanted to watch on TV. And when she started becoming a "young lady," and no one was allowed to look at her because she thought she was fat. And how she really wasn't fat. And how she was actually very pretty. And how different her face looked when she realized boys thought she was pretty. And how different her face looked the first time she really like a boy who was not on a poster on her wall. And how her face looked when she realized she was in love with that boy. And then I wondered how her face would look when she came out from behind those doors.”

“I still watch her now, like I always did, and she watches me, her brown eyes looking out from a wolf's face. This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one.I won't let this be my last good-bye. I've folded one thousand paper cranes of me and Grace, and I've made my wish. I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.”

“A scarf from her dress works free and floats behind her the way memories float behind the dead.”

“When I find a magazine and I lean back to start reading it, I can see the woman watching me out of the corner of her eye. She moves closer to the child and she puts her arm around him and she leans over and kisses his forehead. I know why she does it and I don't blame her and as I open my magazine my heart breaks and I hope that the little boy doesn't grow up to be anything like me.”

“But her name was Esmé. She was a girl with long, long, red, red hair. Her mother braided it. The flower shop boy stood behind her and held it in his hand. Her mother cut it off and hung it from a chandelier. She was Queen. Mazishta. Her hair was black and her handmaidens dressed it with pearls and silver pins. Her flesh was golden like the desert. Her flesh was pale like cream. Her eyes were blue. Brown.”