“Birthdays were wretched, delicious things when you lived in Beau Rivage. The clock stuck midnight, and presents gave way to magic.Curses bloomed.Girls bit into sharp apples instead of birthday cake, chocked on the ruby-and-white slivers, and collapsed into enchanted sleep. Unconscious beneath cobweb canopies, frozen in coffins of glass, they waited for their princes to come. Or they tricked ogres, traded their voices for love, danced until their glass slippers cracked.A prince would awaken, roused by the promise of true love, and find he had a witch to destroy. A heart to steal. To tear from the rib cage, where it was cushioned by bloody velvet, and deliver it to the queen who demanded the princess's death. Girls became victims and heroines.Boys became lovers and murderers.And sometimes... they became both.”

“No glass slippers, just a glass heart shattering into a million slivers of regret.”

“How were you able to see at once: a glass and an apple, a statue and a rifle, a woman and a cage? When you started to collect all you saw, you found yourself unable to sketch even a passing image. What was missing was a thread and perhaps more glass so that these would all coalesce in an enchanting image. You then knew that the glass was not a glass, nor the apple and apple, or the statue. . . You had to search for their secrets. Sleeping in the well of your eyes, in the light of the absent mirror, in the ray glistening on the side of your face.”

“We had a blast at my magical birthday party. There were midgets, fairies, glass slippers, and I actually got to ride in a pumpkin.”

“One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.”

“The carriage was crammed: waves of silk, ribs of three crinolines, billowed, clashed, entwined almost to the height of their heads; beneath was a tight press of stockings, girls' silken slippers, the Princess's bronze-colored shoes, the Princes patent-leather pumps; each suffered from the others' feet and could find nowhere to put his own.”