... fantasy is not practice for what is real—fantasy is the opiate of women.

I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.

Being a writer is a good, good thing.

I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.

I hate them," Enna said. "Whoever is responsible for making me sleep outside without pillows, I hate them." Mmm-hmmm...," Dasha said. Rin had noticed that the Tiran girl often had trouble remembering how to speak in the morning. If Finn were here," Enna continued to mumble as she rewrapped her head cloth, "he'd let me rest my head on his chest at night. Or leg. Or arm. And then he'd find whoever was responsible for the whole sleeping outside with no pillows situation and hold him while I kicked him in the shins.

I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.

Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff. Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze. Words can sing.