I'm tired of being what everyone else has made me," I said. "I want to be myself." "Don't be a child." I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. "What?" "You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I'm tired of your whining.

The shadows of Ina-Karekh are the place where nightmares dwell, but not their source. Never forget: the shadowlands are not elsewhere. We create them. They are within.

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember.

There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child.

He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where it appeared he'd been chopping vegetables when the urge to stab himself through the wrist had struck. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor.

There's truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.

In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.