It is scary, sometimes, Tomas admitted. But the scary bits are what make you brave.

She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.

You're not supposed to have iron bars around you - no one is supposed to have that. You're supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That's what happens when you're alive.

She had witnessed the world's most beautiful things, and allowed herself to grow old and unlovely. She had felt the heat of a leviathan's roar, and the warmth within a cat's paw. She had conversed with the wind and had wiped soldier's tears. She had made people see, she'd seen herself in the sea. Butterflies had landed on her wrists, she had planted trees. She had loved, and let love go. So she smiled.

I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.

There's fire in my fingers. I burn everything I touch.

How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?