I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.

A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer--Gem-ma, Gem-ma--and then the leaves bend down and trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.

...dreams were dreams and reality was reality and she felt people were better off understanding the difference.

Agent Jones held Sinjin’s face in his hands. “I’m going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals.” “How right you are, strange delusional man,” Sinjin said.

Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn't actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn't exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker's reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma's ideas are as inconsequential as dust.

Come awake, Tom. Fathers can willfully hurt their children. They can be addicts too weak to give up their vices, no matter the pain it causes. Mothers can turn you invisible with neglect. They can erase you with a denial, a refusal to see. Friends can deceive you. People lie. It is a cold, hard world. I do not blame Nell Hawkins for retreating from it into a madness of her own choosing.

Evie didn’t mind yelling, but she hated feeling judged. It got under her skin and made her feel small and ugly and unfixable.