“Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work.”

“You should step out of the box more often. See what the world has to offer.”“I stepped out of the box the night I broke the statue, and look where that got me.”“Exactly! You had a chance to get to know me as a result. Talk about lucky. Think what could happen if you tried again.”

“You see, I had been exploring the tunnels of my own mind, and my greatest idea had come to me.""What was it?" Neverfell was fascinated. "I do not know," the Kleptomancer answered, perfectly phlegmatically. "But I am sure I will let myself know when the time is right. You see, anybody who chases a plan, however secretively and indirectly, gives themselves away. After a while you can predict them, work out what they want. So I decided the only way to avoid this was not to know what the plan was, or even the parts of the plan, until I needed them. Nobody could predict me, because I could not predict myself. Nobody could work out what I wanted, because I did not know what I wanted.”

“You know," Gabriel said, "there was a time I thought we could be friends, Will.""There was a time I thought I was a ferret," Will said, "but that turned out to be the opium haze. Did you know it had that effect? Because I didn't.”

“The part where you need to choose among the choices that are there, and not the ones that aren't there anymore. At least not how you need them to be. You're still stuck on some imaginary idea you have of how it could have been. You need to think about how it is now. And how you want it to be.”

“There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?”