“I don’t mind being pitied. As long as it gets me what I want, people can think whatever they want about me.”

“She recognized in herself a distaste for people, which was both physical and intellectual; and yet she nurtured a shameful, secret desire for popularity, or at least for acceptance, neither of which came her way.”

“I didn’t ask you to leave. I said you shouldn’t be here.”

“DO NOT FEED THE GODS.”

“Women were permitted to roam the streets during the curfew hours; only men were forbidden, for men were considered a danger to the capital at night.”

“There may be someone on the other side of these spells that's in true peril. And while I'm in no position to be some knight in shining armor, I am the only one who's here, so I can at least try to be brave.”

“I can't fight stories," she whispered, and a few tears, dark as ink, ran down her face and tangled in her hair.

"Stories are of great use,” I said. “Indeed, they are the foundation of dryadology. We would be lost without them, as astronomers cut off from the sky.”

“You are going to be one of the greatest tennis players in the world someday, cariño. That is as true as your brown hair. You don’t need to show them. You just need to be.”

“Because when the legends get written, I didn’t want to be remembered for standing on the sidelines. I want my future offspring to know that I was there, and that I fought against her at the end, even if I couldn’t do anything useful.”