“Don’t get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That’s a story. Handled properly, it’s more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.”

““Do you get tired, singing?” she asked.
Gan Itai laughed quietly. “Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.””

“While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.”

““She was stronger than the gods who created her?”
“Guys, I didn’t make this stuff up. Don’t ask me to rationalize it. Goblin, you’ve been everywhere. You ever seen a religion that can’t be picked to shreds by any nonbeliever with brains enough to tie his own bootlaces?”

“The cold winds sweeping the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And ’mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press’d,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.”

“Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.”

“There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child.”

“With the cry I wake;—and around me
The mother and child at her feet
Breathe peace in even whispers;
And the night falls heavy and sweet.”

“You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.”

“Outside
Gets inside
Through her skin.”