One world on its own is a strange enough seethe of coiling, unknowable veins of intention and chance, but two? Where two worlds mingle breath through rips in the sky, the strange becomes stranger, and many things may come to pass that few imaginations could encompass.

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.

...I said I was sorry.” “Be sorry, then. Just be sorry somewhere else.

It was as if she had emitted a pulse of radiation that reached him even where he stood, and it bathed him and it burned him.

...magic was ugly—-a hard bargain with the universe, a calculus of pain.

Cats and ghosts both partook of the saucers of milk and that was okay. They consumed different parts of it: the cats its substance, the ghosts its essence, and none went to waste.

It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.