Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?

I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this again?

Avicenna California...Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.

For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker's victim. And yet she could make no move that was not beautiful. Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

I am infected with life and will die of it in time.

I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters.