2. One day, after making her bed, putting on her fanciest clothes, and eating a breakfast that consisted entirely of things that tasted delicious but probably cut five years off her life-expectancy, Lillian Vanderpoel walked out of her front door and didn't stop until she reached the Lacrish river, eighteen miles later.
3. When I was six, I thought a dragon lived under my bed. When I was seven, I knew that wasn't true but wished it was; there are worse things than dragons.
4. Every now and then, George Barbados Edward Heath the seventh wondered what lay outside his bedroom walls. He knew there was something, despite what Nurse and all the maids told him: at night, he heard noises if he pressed his ear against the patch of wallpaper that was beginning to peel.
5. Sometimes it's best to go into a situation expecting to die.
...You know, that last one could go in quite a few very different directions.