In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children, #4)

by Seanan McGuire

Children are capable of grasping complex ideas long before most people give them credit for, wrapping them in a soothing layer of nonsense and illogical logic. To be a child is to be a visitor from another world muddling your way through the strange rules of this one, where up is always up, even when it would make more sense for it to be down, or backward, or sideways. Yet children can see the functionality of grief or understand the complexities of a parent’s love without hesitating.

a bright, shimmering thing is almost certainly looking to be seen, and that which hopes to be seen is pursuing its own agenda.

There are many good things in the world, and each of them happens for the first time only once, and never again.

Maybe every debt matters more when you’re already carrying so many.

There is wanting and there is needing, and when you want, you can make good choices, but when you need, it’s important the people around you not be looking to take advantage.

The Market knows, you see, when someone is acting to the best of their ability. The Market doesn’t punish us for having limitations. It only reminds us that fair value applies to everyone.”

the rules have to be for everyone if they’re going to be for anyone.”

Home always shrinks in times of absence, always bleeds away some of its majesty, because what is home, after all, apart from the place one returns to when the adventure is over?

There might be healthier meals, more balanced meals, more nuanced meals, but his pies were the first things she’d eaten upon finding this wonderful place, upon making her first real friend, and to her, they would always taste like coming home.

You can’t save anyone if you neglect yourself. All you can do is fall slowly with them.

Hunger makes us foolish, causes us to make poor decisions without realizing how poor they are. If you want to help her, you need to help yourself first. No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.”

As long as everyone only ate what they needed, there was always enough.

“You don’t really know me.” “You’ve never let me.”

You can’t have everything and give fair value. You can’t stop your clock and expect to stay a part of the world.