How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"You're dead," I told her.
"Yes. I was eaten," said Ursula Monkton.
"You're dead. You aren't real."
"I was eaten," she repeated. "I am nothing. And they have let me out, just for a little while, from the place inside them. It's cold in there, and very empty. But they have promised you to me, so I will have something to play with; something to keep me company in the dark. And after you have been eaten, you too will be nothing. But whatever remains of that nothing will be mine to keep, eaten and together, my toy and my distraction, until the end of time. We'll have such fun." (12.77-80)
This is kind of confusing. If she's dead and been reduced to nothing, how have they let her out? How is she threatening him with the nothingness if she herself doesn't exist?
Quote #5
"How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time, until your loved ones give you poison and sell you to anatomy, and even then you will die with a hole inside you, and you will wail and curse at a life ill-lived. But you won't grow. You can come out, and we will end it, cleanly, or you can die in there, of hunger and of fear. And when you are dead your circle will mean nothing, and we will tear out your heart and take your soul for a keepsake." (12.93)
Whoa—the hunger birds know how to issue a threat. Either come out and face a grisly death now, or live a miserable life and die terribly anyway.
Quote #6
At that moment, for once in my childhood, I was not scared of the dark, and I was perfectly willing to die (as willing as any seven-year-old, certain of his immortality, can be) if I died waiting for Lettie. Because she was my friend. (12.95)
This is an interesting concept—he's willing to die because he's certain of his immortality. It almost makes sense in a very contradictory, confusing way. Basically, because he believes that he cannot die, he is willing to do so for a friend.