There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will be all hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it’s the wonders I’m after, even if I have to bleed for them.
Shoes are funny beasts. You think they’re just clothes, but really, they’re alive. They want things. Fancy ones with gems want to go to balls, big boots want to go to work, slippers want to dance. Or sleep. Shoes make the path you’re on. Change your shoes, change your path.
How I adore you, Marya. How well I chose. Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.
Truly, Autumn is my season,” the scarlet beast chorted. “Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.
I have all the books I need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin.
Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.
Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.
But love is love, and love is compulsion. I must, and I do.
You can’t trust just any old person who comes along with a hundred puffins and a pretty face!
Fairyland is a very Scientifick place. We subscribe to all the best journals.
Every morning she pulled a delicate cup from its brass hook and filled it, hoping that it would be dark and deep and secret as a forest, and each morning it cooled too fast, had too much milk, stained the cup, made her nervous.
I wish for my child to have a mind as stark and wild as the winter, a spirit as clear and fine as my window, and a heart as red and open as my wounded hand.
Will Hilt to hand yet be restored? Take me up, thy mother’s sword.
I savor bitterness – it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.
In future days you will call John Mandeville a liar, and my shade will laugh at you and say: true, true, I was, but not always, not so. When the world was good enough in my sight, when it behaved as wildly and gorgeously as I always knew it could, I told the truth of it.
Music has more rules than math or magic and it’s twice as dangerous as both or either.
God is another way of talking about the power to break things, that’s all. When you mean to break a goblet or a bone, well, just do it and be done. But when the things to be broken get big enough you have to start talking about God.
The Party is a wonderful, marvelous invention, and it has taught us wonderful, marvelous things – chiefly, that we can cause more trouble with less effort by filing complaints than by breaking teacups.
There are no tigers for us, just a city, waiting, and it loves us, in whatever ways a city can love.
That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home – someday, somehow.