Everyone was willing to take some small risk to lessen the damage of their ambition and disorder and lawlessness.

When you're a monster, you are thanked and praised for not being a monster.

Everybody was strange. In a fit of frustration, she scratched out strange and wrote the word CRACKPOTS in big letters.

Katsa hugged her for a long time, and Bitterblue understood that this was always how it would be. Katsa would come and then Katsa would go. But the hug was real, and lasting, even though it would end. The coming was as real as the going, and the coming would always be a promise. It would have to be good enough.

His name was Death. It was pronounced to rhyme with "teeth", but Bitterblue liked to mispronounce it by accident on occassion.

Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he'd gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

Do you understand? I don't want you to do a thing if you don't understand it.