"The police have asked for my help. There's been a murder.""A murder! Oh, my. Let me just change my shoes," Evie said excitedly. "It won't be a minute."

"I think we should find some kind of shelter; a cave or something.""I don't want to do that! What if there's like, a creature living in the cave?" Tiara said. "Seriously, I saw this show once where these people were stranded on an island and there were these other people who were sort of crazy-slash-bad and there was this polar bear creature running around.""What happened?" Miss Ohio asked."I don't know. My parents got divorced in the middle of season two and we lost our TiVo."

"I got married in Florence, Italy. My husband and I were in love but totally broke, so we eloped and got married in Italy, where he was going on a business trip. We had to pull a guy off the street to be our witness. It was incredibly romantic. Florence is still one of my favorite cities in the world."

"In a world like this one, only the random makes sense."

"If you would understand the present, you must come to know the past."

"Chasing after words like trying to grab the tails of comets."

"Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?""What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said."Tomorrow morning," Mabel said."

"So, now I've been to see a drug counselor who told me I need to lay off the drugs and talk about my feelings, and a shrink who heard what I had to say and immediately put me on drugs."

"I think sometimes in literature we kind of police ourselves. I know a lot of people talked about Twilight, and they would say, oh, but the heroine, she lets this man make her decisions. And I thought, that may not be the particular fantasy or trope that works for me.But listen man, I read Wuthering Heights. I wanted me a little Heathcliff action. I mean, why can't we indulge that fantasy and also be like, "And now I would like the ERA passed, please. Also, this lipstick is fuckin' killer."

"There are no safe choices. Only other choices."

"What happens if your choice is misguided?' I ask, softly.Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. 'You must try to correct it.''But what if it's too late? What if you can't?'There's a sad sympathy in Miss Moore's catlike eyes as she regards my painting again. She paints the thinnest sliver of shadow along the bottom of the apple, bringing it fully to life.'Then you must find a way to live with it."

"Really? And what curse befalls the Adams of the world?"Ann opens her mouth and, presumably thinking of nothing to say, closes it again. It is Felicity who answers, eyes steely. "They are weak to temptation. And we are their temptresses."

"So I slap on that smile and pretend everything's okay even though it's not."

"Her eyes take on that suspicious, wounded look girls get when they know they've fallen off the top rung of friendship and someone else has passed them, but they don't know when or how the change took place."

"She dances a little jig. "This would make one hell of a TV show, huh?" "Yeah. But no one would believe it." I should let it go. But it's like the hole, like the door, and I have to know. Or at least, I have to ask. "Hey, Dulcie, was any of that real?" She finishes her dance and the wings come to rest. "Who's to say what's real or not?" "Yeah, but--my barometer on reality, not so good since I started going crazy. "Yeah, well, who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?"

"Agent Jones held Sinjin's face in his hands. "I'm going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals."How right you are, strange delusional man, Sinjin said."

"Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains."

"It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments - changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day."

"You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies."

"God doesn't like lesbians," Grandma Huberman hised, throwing the magazine in the trash.Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn't understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who'd never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn't God made both of them? But people were like that, she'd noticed. They'd invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid reasons."

"We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds."

"War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so."

"Oh, I didn't think it wise to hide it. Might not be able to find it again," I say, cheerily. "It's sitting in plain view on your chair in the great hall. I do hope that was the best place for it."

"Do you ever feel that way?""Lonely?"I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it."He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have."Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last."What?""Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another."

"I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think."

"I'm not that kind of Indian, Shanti said, her practiced smile never leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial oppression boiling up into an I'm-going-to-kick-your-ass-in-this-pageant-and-then-take-over-all-your-beauty-out-sourcing-needs hatred."

"And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time."

"I have done what they expected of me. I have curtsied for my Queen and made my debut. This is what I have anticipated eagerly for years. So why do I feel so unsatisfied? Everyone is merry. They haven't a care in the world. And perhaps that is it. How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much."

"What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?"

"There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn't. I failed myself."

"Sometimes I just want to burn down all the rules and start over."

"I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin."

"People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that."

"Kartik feels like a country I want to travel-vast, dangerous, and unknown."

"You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that they know other people, but they don't. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won't eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don't know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel ****ed up for no reason at all."

"The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers."

"The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable."

"Mr. Babcock pats my shoulder. He smiles, and the caterpillar mustache - the envy of state troopers everywhere, I'm sure - straightens out again. I hear that on the weekends, he's a part-time security guard with mirrored sunglasses and a gun. He probably poses in front of his bathroom mirror to see how he looks saying "Freeze!"

"Weren't you wearing a purity ring when we got here? Aren't you supposed to be saving yourself?" Shanti asked. "Yeah," Mary Lou answered. "And then I thought, for what? You save leftovers. My sex is not a leftover, and it is not a Christmas present."

"One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame."

"In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."

"But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on."

"Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones."

"Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else."