The warmth of his embrace soaked into me, a powerful charm against the dark things.

a tree is never just a tree, it is bigger and deeper and wiser than a girl like you will ever be.

This is a—a proposal of marriage?” he asked me, and there was the very smallest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth, something I had never seen before. “I suppose so,” I said, blushing again. “And, as you see, I’m doing it properly, on my knees.” “This would, however, be a partnership of equals you’re offering, I imagine?” “Undoubtedly.” (448-49)

This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.

This had been real: real in its flaws and uncertainties, real in its small triumphs, real in its compromises and understanding.

A wonder tale can be truer than true," I said. I had learned (...) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real.

She had sacrificed her childhood to save her brothers; she loved her family above all else, and her spirits yearned to return home once more, to the wild forest and the land of mystic tales and ancient spirits whence he had taken her. That was the place of her heart, and if he loved her, he must let her go.