The way glass can be molded or blown or cut into any kind of shape made me think about how we as people - our characters or souls - can be shaped or changed by outside influences.

Dane was shaking his head firmly. "Don't bring it here, Ella. No babies." I gave him a dark look. "What if it were a baby polar bear or a baby Galapagos penguin? I bet you'd want it then." "I'd make an exception for endangered species," he allowed. "This baby is endangered. It's with my mother.

I swear on St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals.” Seeing Poppy’s hesitation, Beatrix added enthusiastically, “If a band of pirates kidnapped me and took me to their ship and threatened to make me walk the plank over a shiver of starving sharks unless I told them your secret, I still wouldn’t tell it. If I were tied by a villain and thrown before a herd of stampeding horses all shod in iron, and the only way to keep from being trampled was to tell the villain your secret, I—

I don’t have any mottoes. If I did I would forever be contradicting them.

It's like your whole life you 've been falling toward the earth, until the moment someone catches you. And you realise that somehow you 've caught her at the same time. And together, instead of falling, you might be able to fly.

Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.

Women. You'll interpret anything as love. You see a man wearing an idiotic expression, and you assume he's been struck by Cupid's arrow when in reality, he's digesting a bad turnip.