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.

I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

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

She who invented words, and yet does not speak; she who brings dreams and visions, yet does not sleep; she who swallows the storm, yet knows nothing of rain or wind. I speak for her; I am her own.

Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, 'plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny'.Well, she's pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory.

You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.

When I say forever,' Koschei whispered, 'I mean until the black death of the world. An Ivan means just the present moment, the flickering light of it, in a green field, his mouth on yours. He means the stretching of that moment. But forever isn't bright; it isn't like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.