Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost— or might lose— defined him more than the things he yet possessed.

They fed him a diet made up entirely of knowledge.

She realized that she had naïvely believed that the workings of the world revolved around her and her family. Never before had she acknowledged that somebody else’s life might alter hers.

Very little of what he learned of people’s actions began or ended with either the noble ideals or the fiendish wickedness he had been taught lay behind all great struggles. There was something comforting in...

Respect flows two ways and can mean as much to the giver as to the one receiving.

I sleep lightly and tread to keep my head out of the sea of dreams.

When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height...

Imagine, they said, living an existence where the words out of your mouth changed the very fabric of the world around you.

The world was not to be trusted. Loved persons were always stolen. Dreams always squashed. That was life as she understood it.

She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and...

She was a nightmare of beauty and menace living right there above them, a being part raptor, part human, part divine. She knew without question that she could sweep down on them and inflict upon...

She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours...

One must find rhythms others’ ears don’t hear.