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

“I was thinking how you can't tell if a person's beautiful or not by her shadow...”

“I'll be lucky if I can do as well as you when all this's done, just a bit out of breath, a bit bruised and scratched, a bit wiser and sadder for it all.”

“I'm not hopeless, that's the problem. I'm too hopeful, if anything ... I'm so thick-headed it's taken me this long to give up on men, but I can't give up completely, you know? So I ... I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can't reject me because he isn't real!”

“Ani told them all...telling more than needed telling, the stories clarifying and unifying themselves in her mind as she let them spill out of her mouth.”

“Poor gosling. It hurts to be lost. And worse to be home with no kind of homecoming...I'll be lucky if I can do as well as you when all this's done, just a bit out of breath, a bit bruised and scratched, a bit wiser and sadder for it all.”

“We know it's all just daydreaming. In all likelihood, no one in this forest'll ever get a javelin, and I'll never see my mother's kingdom again, let alone be hailed by crowds as the jewel of Kildenree. Maybe it's vain to wish for it. But sometimes, it'd be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth. Right Finn?”