The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.

I'm not hopeless, that's the problem. I'm too hopeful, if anything ... I'm so thick-headed it's taken me this long to give up on men, but I can't give up completely, you know? So I ... I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can't reject me because he isn't real!

Careful with the accusations of insanity, oh my lady whose home is a tower with windows of brick, all for the sake of some skinny-ankled, laugh-prone boy of a khan.

I don't know how you persist in being so stubborn-" "It's a superpower. I was bitten by a radioactive mule.

My ma says You can't unspill a stew." "She also says Undoing a wrong is greater than doing a right." "You know, Ma is very good at saying two things at once.

She's as fetching as brown hair done up with ribbons blue The mountain, my lady She's as sweet as pink flowers made bright with morning dew, Mount Eskel, my lady

They finished laughing and caught their breaths, and looked at each other, and Ani thought Geric looked at her too long, as though he forgot he was looking, as though he did not wish to do anything else. She looked back. Her took heart took its time quieting down.