“You know that if ever the Fyrdraaca family is in true trouble, Barbizon is supposed to come to life and to our rescue, just as she did for Azucar.''Ayah, Poppy, I've heard the story.''Well, I often consider that I've sat here many times, and often felt in true trouble, and yet Barbizon has never leaped to my aid. So you know what that makes me think?''That it's just a story?''No, no. That my trouble is never true trouble. And things, though I think them bad, are not really so.”

“So when Fyrdraacas turn fourteen and celebrate their Catorcena, and are then adults in the eyes of the Warlord, off we go to Benica Barracks to learn to march, to learn to ride, to learn to shoot, to learn to die. But I do not want to go to the Barracks and learn to be a killer, a servant, a slave.”

“After all, history is a type of fantasy. For all the primary source research, in the end, the past world the historian builds is as weird and remote from our own as Middle Earth or Narnia, yet oddly familiar.”

“People keep asking "Jacob or Edward?" when the really important question is "Diamond Dave or Sammy?”

“Most courage comes from being too tired and hungry to be afraid anymore.”

“You see, Dash -- I was never the girl in your head. And you were never the boy in my head. I think we both knew that. It's only when we try to make the girl or boy in our head real that the true trouble comes. I did that with Carlos, and it was a bad failure. Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.”

“Don't bother explaining—I've heard all the excuses and the trouble is most of them are true.”