The truth's not pretty of course. No one likes to look it in the face.

Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. ‘He might tell me how my story ends,’ he murmured. Meggie looked at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Dustfinger smiled. Meggie still didn’t particularly like his smile. It seemed to appear only to hide something else. ‘What’s so unusual about that, princess?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you know how your story ends?’ Meggie had no answer for that.

I don't like to eat the same dish every day, so I read very different things.

The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.

It was much easier for him now that he was smaller to negotiate his way through his crammed shop but he still tried to swagger past the shelves like he used to in the past. The attempt looked so strange that Scipio started to mimic him behind his back. "What's the silly giggling about?" Barbarossa asked when Prosper and Renzo bust out laughing.

But after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story.

She pressed her hand against her chest. No heart. So where did the love she felt come from?