“Mira sat down on the rim of the fountain. The marble ledge was damp, and mist sprinkled her skin. Coins shimmered under the water like fish scales. She counted them, each one a wish, and wondered how love could be anything but good.”

“Alone in the forest, Katsa sat on a stump and cried. She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.”

“lili lili birdbathsitting on a dirtpathminnow sat on the rim and drankslipped and in the water she sank”

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

“I told him that I loved him and that I'd always love him and I felt like a child who throws a centavo into a fountain and then she has to tell someone her most extraordinary wish even though she knows that the wish should be kept secret and that, in telling it, she is quite probably losing it. He replied that I was not to worry, that the penny could come out of the fountain again and again and again.”

“I was under the stars, like a fish is under water.”