“I have thoroughly compromised your niece," Alex declared. "Will you plase insist that she marry me?"
Caroline didn't bat an eyelash. "This", she announced, "is most peculiar.”

“I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.”

“You are unnerving the hell out of me, Valkyrie."
"oh" she frowned, petting her bat fitfully " I must have misread the future for the past." she shrugged. "It happens.”

“Now the tattoos," Zia announced.
"Brilliant!" I said.
"On your tongue," she added.
"Excuse me?”

“Alex is cool because a lot of people can relate to her. She's not the most popular girl in school, but she's also not a geek. I know what it's like to think you don't always fit in, and I think kids can relate to Alex's feelings about being average.”

“She was made of flesh and eyelashes.”

“I will kill him.”

“Erra’s eyebrows rose. “You’d have to go through me first.”

I shrugged. “I have to do something for a warm-up.”

She laughed softly. “That’s the spirit. I do think you might be my favorite niece.”

“It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.”

“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.”

“Impaler,’ she declared, ‘I have no equal.”