Robots are like Mars: they needgirls. Boys won't do;the memesoup is all wrong. They stompwhen they should kissand they're none too keenon having things shoved inside them...It's not a robotuntil you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like that. A junkyard the Company forgot to put a girl in.

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

A house is a kind of box you put a girl in.

Memory is like that. It alters itself so that girlsare always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.

I see you go bare-shod. This is most likely extremely sensible. Shoes are no end of trouble for girls. . . . How many have danced to death in slippers of silk and glass and fur and wood? Too many to count—the graveyards, they are so full these days. You are very wise to let your soles become grubby with mud, to let them grow their own slippers of moss and clay and calluses. This is far preferable to shoes which may become wicked at any moment.

We think . . . that girls ought to sing. They ought to sing, and dance while they're singing. But we are not girls, and so can be almost certain that we know nothing about the matter.

Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they may grow up strong and tall.

A dragon looks like a girl when it is young.

She passed a hand over her eyes. A year and more now, that she had needed glasses. 'Look', those glasses said from her desk. 'Look how much you are not like the others. You grow older and your eyes wear out. In case you could ever mistake yourself for belonging'. Marya supposed this was why no one asked after stolen fairy tale girls. What embarassment they turn out to be. They grow tempers; they join the army; they need glasses. Who wants them?