This wasn’t the first time Cora had met people who thought their ideas — Seanan McGuire

"“Heroism is addictive. Maybe that’s why it sounds so much like ‘heroin.’”"

"“Hope hurts. That’s what you need to learn, and fast, if you don’t want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won’t ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there’s nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying ’don’t use this word’ and ’don’t use that word,’ but she never bans the ones that are really bad. She never bans hope.”"

"“Only one way to find out,” said Kade, and started walking. “Why do people always say that?” muttered Cora, trailing along at the rear of the group. There’s always more than one way to find something out. People only say there’s only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it. There are lots of ways to find out, and some of them even involve not pissing off a man who goes by ‘the Lord of the Dead.’” “Yeah, but they wouldn’t be as much fun, now would they?”"

"The Queen of Cakes pursed her lips. “You must be from Sumi’s world,” she said primly. “You’re just as obnoxious as she was. She’s quiet now. How did you make her that way?” “Well, she died, so that was a large part of it,” said Kade. “Dead people normally stay in their graves, out of the way of the rest of us.”"

"Miss Hansard, who had been teaching for nearly twenty years, slumped against her desk and wondered when retirement had gone from a distant impossibility to something to be devoutly yearned for. They got younger every year. She was certain of that much, at least. They got younger, and harder to understand, every single year."

"Her accusations had been met with reality, and they didn’t have anyplace else to go."