“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.”

“Every girl pretends she is a princess at one point, no matter how little her life is like that.”

“Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.”

“I’m a girl. Every girl pretends she’s a princess at one point, no matter how little her life is like that. And I like the idea of ‘happily ever after.”

“Pea was aware suddenly of how fragile her heart was, how much darkness was inside it, fighting, always, with the light. She did not like the rat. She would neverlike the rat, but she knew what she must do to save her own heart.”

“She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.”

“And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.”

“She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.”

“How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary
Knowing her dearer self safe, sheltered, warm?
How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,
Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?
How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,
Our God forgot, our holy saints defied;
But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,
And thrust those little angel hands aside?”

“Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives
She builds our quiet as she forms our lives;
Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even,
And opens in each heart a little heaven.”