“No small thing, a bee's stingWhen it enters the heartNot so benign, the growing vineWhen it tears stone apart”

“He did a very good impression of a stone column.”

“Khan Tegas never looked at me. I'm a mucker maid. I guess I needed to be reminded of that. So, good. Fine. Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone.”

“Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone.”

“She touched the healthy folds of skin around the baby's neck, wrists, and thighs, the dark lines crying for life made in his forehead, and thought how people start with wrinkles and end with wrinkles, grow into their skin and then live to grow out of it again.”

“There you go...let it all slide out. Unhappiness can't stick in a person's soul when it's slick with tears.”

“Once she'd thought all the knowledge in the world was contained in the princess academy's thirteen books. Now she faced thousands. She wondered if she should curtsy as if she were entering a chapel.”