I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.
He had done it. He had taken hold.
It seems like a good thing to know the star that can keep you from being lost in this world.
Frank thought how mysterious the world was, how unexplainable and sometimes frightening. But to sit in the kitchen and read to someone he loved and to push back the darkness with a story – that was a wonderful thing.
His rat soul longed inexplicably for it; he began to think that light was the only thing that gave life meaning, and he despaired that there was so little of it to be had.
I kept on going over and over the list in my head. I memorized it the same way I had memorized the list of ten things about my mama. I memorized it so if I didn’t find him, I would have some part.
I ain’t learned a thing. Not one thing. Except that there ain’t nothing in this world that can’t happen. That’s it. That’s the whole of it.
Nothing is more terrifying to evil than joy.
We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home.
What world is this I now inhabit, and how shall I live in it?
What is it to know that people will come searching for you? Everything.
How did anybody say goodbye to someone they loved? But that was what the world demanded, wasn’t it? Again and again, the world insisted upon betrayals, goodbyes. How could anyone bear it?
To be brave is to not turn away. To be brave is to go forward. To be brave is to love.
He looked at me, and, my goodness, his eyes were bright, and it occurred to me that they were probably so bright because he had never had to ask himself who he was or where he belonged or who he wanted to be.
Let her have her dangerous will.
We do not know what will become. What will become is what becomes, and that is all we know.
The world no longer shone, but it was very bright... Strange world! Impossible world!
Mark that it is dangerous. Trouble has a very long tail.
And shouldn’t home be the place where you are allowed to be yourself, loved as yourself?
Pea was aware suddenly of how fragile her heart was, how much darkness was inside it, fighting, always, with the light.
Perhaps, he thought, it is not too late, after all, for me to be saved.