Every once in a while you just have to decide to do something very crazy and very right--just to dare yourself to live. I don't mean doing something stupid and destructive--just something fun and good and beautiful.

I went to work for Catholics United for the Faith, and I basically found myself in the midst of the traditionalist branch of the Catholic revival. There is an intellectual rigor that is very much valued there and that I was in awe of.

You're drinking in the joy of life,' Bear told her when she tried to explain why she was laughing. 'There's so much opportunity for drinking deeply of it, and we very rarely do it. When you do, it makes you feel alive all over.

Do you know, I always imagine that the subway trains are dragons,' Rose said to Bear as they clung to his coat for support in the swaying car. 'Tearing back and forth across the city in their underground caves, devouring people and spitting them out at random destinations.

Can you imagine anything more tragic?' Rose asked. 'To be born a princess --native and to the manor born-- and then to forget who you are and settle for being something horrible like an--an accountant!

She remembered that once, when she was a little girl, she had seen a pretty young woman with golden hair down to her knees in a long flowered dress, and had said to her, without thinking, "Are you a princess?" The girl had laughed very kindly at her and asked her what her name was. Blanche remembered going away from her, led by her mother's hand, thinking to herself that the girl really was a princess, but in disguise. And she had resolved that someday, she would dress as though she were a princess in disguise.

Evil isn't beautiful on its own. You know?' 'Well, good people are sometimes ugly-' Blanche said at last. 'I don't know about that. Not really,' Bear shook his head. 'If the good's there, and you look for it, you'll see it in some way.' 'I think Bear is right,' Rose said decidedly. 'Fairy tales teach you that. No one who's really good ever stays ugly. It's always a disguise.