Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard.

I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

True names,” said September wonderingly. “These are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you don’t come and they call again but you still don’t come, and they call you by all your names together, and then, of course, you have to come, and right quick. Because true names have power, like Lye said. But I never told anyone my true name. The Green Wind told me not to. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I do now.

You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".

I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.

No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.