Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.
Tell Crabby Abby he’s going to sit on the naughty chair if he sinks one more island,” Astrid said, catching her ball.
Should you ever decide, in those small dark hours, to hang yourself, well, that is your choice. But don’t hunt for the rope until morning. By then you’ll find a much better use for it.
Isabelle had cut off her toes, but sometimes she could still feel them. Maman had cut out her heart. Sometimes, she could still feel that, too.
I could solve all the Diophantine equations, extend Newton’s work on infinite series, complete Euler’s analysis of prime numbers, and it wouldn’t matter.” She looked at Isabelle. “Ella is the beauty. You and I are the ugly stepsisters. And so the world reduces us, all three of us, to our lowest common denominator.
I want to have hope, I can’t help it, but I’m almost afraid to,” Serafina.
Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right.
One is not born knowing how to lead, one learns.
If you’re going to bury the past, bury it deep, girl. Shallow Graves always give up their dead.
That’s what we do with our pain,” she said, watching the butterfly rise. “We make it into something beautiful.” “We make it into something meaningful,” said the diva. “We make it matter,” whispered the actress.
Once upon always and never again, in an ancient city by the sea, three sisters worked by candlelight.
She might be a captive, but in this room, with a book in her hand, she could be free.
I’m always doing things I can’t do. Otherwise, I’d never get to do them.
The day you stop dreaming you might as well take yourself down to the undertaker’s, for you’re as good as dead.
We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither.
Murder is not a suitable topic of conversation for a young lady.
But you are a different sort of girl. Not at all what I expected you to be. And this is a different sort of time. And so I am hopeful for all the things you may yet find.
Asking questions, demanding explanations – these things always led to trouble.
But here, surrounded by friends who wanted her, she recognized for the first time that there was only one voice that truly mattered. Only one she had to listen to. Her own.
She was sorry for all the grim-tale girls locked in lonely towers. Trapped in sugar houses. Lost in the dark woods, with a huntsman coming to cut out their hearts.