“If there was one thing Brenda Dyerson was good at, she knew it, was cooking up the scraps destiny had laid out on its plates for her.”

“I looked at my sister's white knees nestled together like a pair of Brenda's eggs and had the urge, not for the first time, to crack her right open. I wanted to pick her ribs apart until I got to the messy center of her - surely somewhere inside my sister there must be some sort of mess, I thought - and dip my fingers in”

“Of course, this memory makes me sorrowful now, for it anyone ever knew the shape of me, it was Amelia - and not just the outer lines of me, either, but all my innards as well. She was as necessary as the sun to me. She was the quiet heat that shimmered inside my shadow and made it live, and without her, I am a little darker.”

“The body is just the body. It has it's own structures, it's own laws. It's a thing unto itself. When it breaks down, that's it.”

“And one day, you, too, might grow up to be enchanting.”

“I figure that if a secret has an answer, it'll out on its own if it's meant to, and if it doesn't then maybe providence has a better reason for keeping it hidden than you think.”

“Sometimes I think I collect souls to make up for the ones I've lost over the course of my life.”