It is difficult to see a situation for what it is when you are in the midst of it,” Tsukiko says. “It is too familiar. Too comfortable.

Once they were librarians, but that is a subject they will only discuss if heavily intoxicated.

We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.

Where do you get your ideas? people ask. Sometimes they’re at the bottoms of cups of tea. Sometimes they’re lurking in my shower. Sometimes they’re waiting patiently in glass cases in museums.

“Nothing's impossible,” Poppet responds. She smiles at him and jumps, her red hair trailing out behind her as she falls.

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?

Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.