“If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.”

“A brick could be used for pressing grapes into wine, and a magician could then cover up that wine with a blanket and turn wine into water.
”

“Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.”

“It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.”

“The crap and the trash of the world. Post-consumer human butt wipe that no one would ever go to the trouble to recycle.”

“I’m not going to tell anybody, not even Lilly. Lilly would NOT understand. NOBODY would understand. Because nobody I know has ever been in this situation before. Nobody ever went to bed one night as one person and then woke up the next morning to find out that she was somebody completely different.”