Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.
Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you.
Sometimes it is safer to read maps with your feet.
No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they’ve tried, they’ve only made matters worse. No wizard ever stopped a war or mended a fence. It’s better that they stay in their marshes, out of the way of worldly folk like farmers and soldiers and merchants and kings.
You should never poison a witch.
A monster. You and your friends, all of you. Pretty monsters. It’s a stage all girls go through. If you’re lucky you get through it without doing any permanent damage to yourself or anyone else.
You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It’s hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart, and you weren’t quite ready to give up on him yet.
I’d be flattered if someone said that my work is “too weird” for them. I value the uncompliment.
What I like about narrative in general is when there is some incongruity between the form and content. Let’s say, mixing up the gothic with a coming-of-age narrative. Telling a love story that’s also a monster story. Mixing up superhero tropes with your monster tropes. I like category confusion.
As if our happiness, our good fortune, might rub off, contestants ask us for a light: they brush up against us in the halls, pull strands of hair off our clothing. Whenever we leave our bed, our room – not often – two or three are sure to be lurking just outside our door.
I think that we want to be led slightly astray when we’re being told a story. Just a little wrong footed.
You may very well ask what the goddess of love is doing in St. Andrews, writing trashy romances. Adapting.
The boy is loved. The loved one suffers. All loved ones suffer. Love is not enough to prevent this. Love is not enough. Love is enough. The thing that you wished for. Was this it?
What happens when you get to the end of the world? Sometimes you find a party. This party has been going on for a long time. There is music, lights, people drinking and dancing. Strange things happen at these parties. It is the end of the world, after all.
Because love isn’t just love. It’s all the other stuff, too.
Everyone who is alive has a ghost inside them, don’t they?
Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city on fire.
She put her feet down gently. The whole world was made of glass, and the glass was full of champagne, and Bunnatine was a bubble, just flicking up and up and up.
Her chest feels very tight, as if she’s suddenly full of poison. You have to keep it all inside. Like throwing yourself on a bomb to save everyone else. Except you’re the bomb.
How could I love you? How could I love a ghost? How could I love something that I have to keep hidden in my pocket?