Kill her for me," she said in that whiny little-girl voice. Diego took a step toward me, wearing an expression that told me he was only too happy to oblige his lady love. "Oh, what?" I said. I wasn't even scared. I didn't care anymore. The numbness in my heart had pretty much taken over my whole body. "You always do what she tells you? You know, we have a word for that now. It's called being whipped.

Don't cry." "How can I not?" I asked him. "You just said you loved me." "Well, why else did you think all of this was happening?" He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. "The Furies wouldn't be trying to kill you if I didn't love you." "I didn't know," I said. Tears were trickling down my cheeks, but I did nothing to try to stop them. His shirt was absorving most of them. "You never said anything about it. Every time I saw you, you just acted so... wild." "How was I supposed to act?" he asked. "You kept doing things like throwing tea in my face.

I love the Princess Diaries series! Do you?

What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the weight of a single grain of sand? The answer is equal to my interest in the message you are about to leave. So make it short.

The first thing we did was change all the clocks so that her siblings thought it was bedtime, then put them to bed ignoring their plaintive protests that they were not tired. They wept themselves to sleep soon enough.

You just said you were sorry." ... "I was only apologizing," he said stiffly, "for startling you. The applause was to compliment you on the improvement in your life-saving techniques since the last time you-

Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.