He missed you like a fish in a bowl misses the open sea.

Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.

Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being.

It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.

Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.

She was beautiful and terrifying, savage and pure.

Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It's the way of the world.