Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.

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

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.

And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.

But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.