“They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.”

“I grunted. “She’s not a delicate princess,” I said. “She’s a warrior. Warriors have enemies. Sometimes warriors get hurt.” I felt my jaws clench. “And then their friends even things up.”

“Her father said she was a princess. He did not see that she was a brave knight.”

“It's true," she said. "Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.”

“Are you a princess? I said & she said I'm much more than a princess, but you don't have a name for it yet here on earth.”

“So, there was this beautiful princess.
She was locked in a high tower(…)She was stuck up there(…)So the only thing was to jump.”

“He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. … He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a real strange relationship. …This is a resource that you can either mine or not. It's not as blatant as we're talking about. You don't think about it that much. You don't immediately realize how old she was at the time. It would be subtle. She could talk about it. "I was jail bait the last time we were together." She can flaunt it at him, but at the same time she never says, "I was fifteen years old." Even if we don't mention it, when we go to cast the part we're going to end up with a woman who's about twenty-three and a hero who's about thirty- five.”

“This was one princess who could rescue her own damn self.”

“And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.”

“She was the people's princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and our memories for ever.”