“Goodness, my nose is enormous,' she exclaimed. 'Why didn't anyone tell me?”

“That was a good day for me," Skulduggery said. "I didn't have to hit anyone. I didn't have to shoot anyone. I just sat around and talked to my good friend and partner, Valkyrie Cain.”

“My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats... One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she'd scream that she was sorry I'd ever been born -- that I'd ruined her life... [She] would often stuff her mouth with cotton and hold her breath, pretending that she was dead, to scare me when I was small. Sometimes she'd tell me she really could walk and during the night she was going to get up, turn on the gas jets, and kill us both. I would be absolutely terrified... And yet... she encouraged my writing and would tell me that I was a good kid and she didn't know why she acted that way... but then she'd do it again.”

“Don't tell me I haven't been good to you.
Don't tell me I have never been there for you.
Don't tell me why
Nothing is good enough.”

“When I was little, my dad used to tell me, "Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."”

“She wondered why they didn't understand that their true selfs were good enough, and if they weren't, then the someones they weren't good enough for, were really the ones not good enough.”

“She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.”

“Just why are we so poor? Why can I never sleep at night? Because bombs keep dropping! Why does my mother have to torture herself like that? Why didn't anyone give my dad a break? Why is there a war? Why? Why? Why?”

“Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.”

“"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on which the gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive, or whether you created it. But"—and here his countenance somewhat changed—"this butterfly is not now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in a daydream of my youth."”