“She was the sort of person for whom fear was the natural response to that beyond explanation.”

“Some seasons later, the Princess of the kingdom was riding with her handmaiden on the edge of the dark woods. Though once she had been very ill, the Princess had recovered miraculously and was now ...”

“Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but ch...”

“Because desperate people cling to hope like sailors to their wreaks.”

“Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it...”

“She'd slept terribly the night before. The room, the bed, were both comfortable enough, but she'd been plagued with strange dreams, the sort that lingered upon waking but slithered away from memory...”

“[W]hen it's slow, they send you home, and when it's busy, they expect you to stay late. They also expect you to be able to come in to cover someone's shift if a co-worker gets sick at the last minu...”

“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to p...”

“A man may beg, but a woman has to sell.”