“When we decided to have Julie, I couldn’t carry her. We sat down and the hard numbers stared back at us. I made twice as much as Fern. We wouldn’t have been able to feed ourselves, let alone another mouth, if I’d been the one to hold her. And so we both went for the operation, and they took eggs from the two of us and made them one. And then I squeezed Fern’s hand when she went into the theatre, and when she came out again they’d put it inside her. And sheltered by her body, the one cell that was us divided and became two, and then three, and then four hundred million, and then they divided into parts. Lungs, heart, brain, mouth. And finally, when she was ready, Julie divided from Fern and there were three of us.”
“On Earth, we have a scary, deadly creature called a spider. You look like one of those. Just so you know.” “Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.” He points to the breeder tanks. “Check tanks!”
“Whenever we come to a new place, I waylaid strangers and dragged their stories and songs and jokes from them before they ever had a chance to find out my name.”
“For Leifen, a thing is beautiful if she can reach out and put her hand on it any time.”
“More than once, they wrapped in furs and cloaks and walked through the garden in the moonlight, still talking. Sometimes they just walked in silence, and Marghe thought she could hear Thenike’s heart.”
“Desire wrapped its arms around her and held her still, helpless, able only to breathe.”
“Your body and your mind need to be clear, uncluttered, for what lies ahead.”
“Thenike laughed, and Marghe listened to that laugh: rich, smoky, warm, it rolled like breaking waves on a flat beach, as if it could go on forever, changeless.”
“Just as I thought I was beginning to know this world and understand it, it throws more magic at me.” “What’s life without magic? Turn your magic into a song, share it with others.” “You know I can’t sing.” “A story, then.”
“Leifin was obsessed by perfection and possessions. It was an obsession that prevented her from seeing any difference between carving something beautiful and killing another thinking, feeling being for its fur.”
“People could not be made to change. It had taken her a long time to learn that. People had to want to change themselves.”
“Danner strode out of her offices, the adrenaline of rage surging light and hot through her veins. Rage that soon became a kind of exhilaration. She was going to do her job. At last.”
“The air was humid, so thick with moisture that she felt it like spider-webs across her face and kept wanting to hush it away, wipe it from her skin.”
“You can help me pick out a tiara when we re done saving the world.”
“You re a miracle, woman. Draden meant it.”
“All things change, and we change with them.”
“She had captured his heart and he didn t ever want it back.”