"I woke alone. The room was small, with a single bed and a dresser. Anna Kristine's daughter's room. Old dolls sat bowed and tilted in the corner, like paralyzed children robbed of their wheelchairs. A silver thimble and brooch lay on the bedside table, next to a clock that had stopped. It was the kind of room from which everything important has been packed up, shipped off."

                     --Vendela Vida, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, 2007

"FAR AWAY FROM EARTH--AT A DISTANCE PAST IMAGINING--LIES THE GEMWORLD! HERE THERE ARE COLORS SO RICH AND BRIGHT AS TO BOGGLE THE SENSES...AND AT THE DIAMOND TEMPLE THOSE COLORS BLEND TOGETHER IN THE WHITE LIGHT OF THE NOBLEST GEM OF ALL! BUT ALL IS NOT HARMONIOUS THIS DAY..."

                     --Dan Mishkin & Gary Cohn, AMETHYST, Vol. 1, No. 1, 
                       "The Long Way Home," 1984