“Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.”

“At least I was true. My intellectual abilities gave me a release, and an excuse. I shunned company because I preferred books; and the dreams I confided to my father were of becoming a scholar in good earnest, and going to University. It was unheard-of several shocked governesses were only too quick to tell me, when I spoke a little too boldly -- but my father nodded and smiled and said, 'We'll see.' Since I believed my father could do anything -- except of course make me pretty -- I worked and studied with passionate dedication, lived in hope, and avoided society and mirrors.”

“So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them--and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love.”

“But he hated to see his people people unhappy--because he was a good king, not because he was a nervous one--”

“I don't remember this earlier,' said Tuck.'No?' said Robin in a neutral voice, and Tuck was too busy to pursue it, but merely bound it up and told him it was time for him, too, to try to sleep. Robin never had to tell anyone of his meeting, weaponless and with an armful of dead branches to break up for firewood, with one of Guy's men. The next day, when the burying began, no one questioned the body of another mercenary.”

“The merrel also knew its wing had not healed. But I could reach a great height once more before it failed me, it said. And from there I would fold my wings and plummet to the earth as if a hare or a fawn had caught my eye; but it would be myself I stooped toward. It would be a good flight and a good death. And so I eat their dead things cut up on a pole, dreaming of my last flight.”

“She laughed at him then, because he sounded like a small boy, not like a very large grown-up Beast with a voice so deep it made the hair on the back of your neck stir when you heard it. 'But vegetables are good for you,' she said, and added caressingly, 'They make you grow up big and strong.'He smiled, showing a great many teeth. 'You see why I wish to eat no more vegetables.”