“That's interesting," Bitterblue said. "You think a conscience requires fear?”

“I wonder if it's meant to be punishment for something one can't forgive oneself for. Or an external expression, Lady Queen, of an internal pain? Or perhaps it's a way to realise that you actually d...”

“Find something useful to do with your morning,' she thought to him as she neared her chambers. 'Do something heroic in front of an audience. Knock a child into a river while no one's looking and th...”

“Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.”

“Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. "Lady Queen," she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. "It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It's the mother's job to p...”

“Truths are dangerous," he said."Then why are you writing them in a book?""To catch them between the pages," said Teddy, "and trap them before they disappear.”

“Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.”

“Memories of lost love they do enpain,Fleeting images of what once was never again to gain.Hold tight those memories that slip through the mind, To walk in those fields again with hera dream divi...”

“As she left the cold arena Angel had to laugh,Beaten by that of a wisp girl and her subliming cunning craft.Jove lay silent in his orbit; brooding, deep, dreamless forweep,And faithful dog Sirius r...”

“He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.”

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Sh...”

“Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.”