“Once you told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it.”

“It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.”

“If you see everything through hovercams and feed stories, you wind up blind to what's right in front of you.”

“And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful... or if the fall had changed the story completely.”

“It's exciting. But you can't keep fighting the way things are forever.”

“Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.”

“You all say you need us. Well, maybe you do, but not to help, with the millions of bubbly new minds about to be unleashed, with all the cities coming awake at last. Together, you're more than enough to change the world without us. So from now on, David and I are here to stand in your way. You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.”