Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.

Von Loewe really should know me well enough by now to realize that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.

But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.

It never occurred to him that now he was looking at his master, at the one person in all the world who held his fate right between her palms - me, in patched hand-me-downs and untrimmed hair and idiot smile - and that my hatred for him is pure and black and unforgiving. And that I don't believe in God, but if I did, if I did, it would be the God of Moses, angry and demanding and OUT FOR REVENGE.

Don't know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.

One moment flying in green sunlight, then the sky suddenly grey and dark.

Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.