“Cinderella never had it so good. All she got was a lousy coach and breakable shoes.”

“I felt less like Cinderella and more like used drywall. Perpetually screwed.”

“I’m so far from lucky, I’m kissing its ass from the other side.”

“I tried to speak, to tell Kit I wasn't dead. No sound came out. But I managed to lift one arm a few inches and execute a tiny wave. Hello, still alive. In a fuck ton of pain, but not dead.”

“She had witnessed the world's most beautiful things, and allowed herself to grow old and unlovely. She had felt the heat of a leviathan's roar, and the warmth within a cat's paw. She had conversed with the wind and had wiped soldier's tears. She had made people see, she'd seen herself in the sea. Butterflies had landed on her wrists, she had planted trees. She had loved, and let love go. So she smiled.”

“Serial Killer Week got off to an inauspicious start when the opening wine and bean evening was invaded by a former prisoner who misinterpreted the poster, but he was at least able to give us the professional's view of the genre.”

“Though she'd try to do otherwise, she had never been able to stop cluttering her present with her past. Now somebody she didn't know would pack her treasures into plastic bags and carry them away. A life, at its end, is a pile of cloth and paper, and goods that can be bagged and labelled. None of the best things - the voice and the laugh, the tilt of the head, the things seen and felt and spoken - are allowed to stay behind.”