“Seemed she should learn to smile when she was unhappy, to stop laughing, to speak up, to never speak to strangers, to share guilt for the acts of strangers, that strangers made the laws of the land, that the laws of the land valued things over life, that life ended if a stranger decided it, to be where she could be found, to feel one thing and do another. How could she hang so many contradictions in one skull”

“She needed friends, and a life, and this is how you acquired those things: by talking to strangers. Everyone was a stranger, all on equal footing in strangerhood.”

“She found a deep sense of fitness in the fact that here, among people, they should be strangers; strangers and enemies. She thought, these people can think of many things he and I are to each other--except what we are. It made the moments she remembered greater, the moments not touched by the sight of others, by the words of others, not even by their knowledge.”

“He mouthed the words to her that she could not see, and that she could not hear. It was all he dared tonight, strangers in a castle, strangers to this land, their future a great black question mark and an ending he could not foresee. He bent his lips to her ear and said without breathe:Lia-heart. Little dragon. I love you too.”

“Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. [...] Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”

“She is not fashioned for a life among strangers.”