“Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it.”

“We wish we could show you the world as it sleeps. Then you'd never have any doubt about how similar, how trusting, how astounding and vulnerable we all are.”

“She now knew that the death she feared might not be a physical one, that it could be death of the will, the soul, the mind, the laws, and thus not death, but a perpetual dying.”

“The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.”

“She taught me that without trust, love could never exist.”

“She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear —
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac…
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.”

“I have seen this too many times before. The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can’t deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope.”

“My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community.”

“Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well.”

“But would she do it differently if she could? She doubted it. Her experiences growing up ad formed her into the woman that she'd become, just as his experiences had formed him, and she didn't regret them. And yet…she knew that wasn't the question that mattered. …she realized the choice before her was this: Where do I go from here?
It is never too late to change things.”