Turns out if you never lie, there's always someone mad at you.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.

Luckily for writers - and unluckily for history - every scientific idea creates human conflict.

She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.

I kissed him once," she whispered. "Well done. What did he do?" "Um..." Deryn sighed. "He woke up.

There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

She looked at David closely, and the feeling was still there. She could see that his forehead was too high, that a small scar cut a white stroke through his eyebrow. And his smile was pretty crooked, really. But it was as if something had changed inside Tally's head, something that had turned his face pretty to her.