Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.
There is a limit to the nonsense even a dream can attempt.
Children surrender nothing when faced with the world: it is the world that gives up, over and over again. By so giving up, of course, it renews itself – that is the secret. Dying in order to live, that sort of thing.
You’ll be all right,′ Elphaba said, ‘now you’re a seasoned traveler. This is just the return leg of a voyage you already know.’ She put her face against Glinda’s and kissed her. ‘Hold out, if you can,’ she murmured, and kissed her again. ‘Hold out, my sweet.
Whispering can disguise the shape of syllables, but not of mood.
Elphaba’s already come back. I saw her last week on the stairs.
After all is said and done,” said the Dormouse, “there is nothing to be done. Or said.
It’s my belief that our lives are stolen from us. Ornamented with pinnate leaves and colored frills, we exist only as a consolation for others. I don’t feel fulfilled. Indeed, some days I scarcely feel at all.
I rarely trust myself to make statements about truth.
Lucrezia Borgia couldn’t be moved by the sentiment, nor could she forgive the insult. Old woman. Old.
I would leave me were I him. I would leave myself if I could.
We all have our shortcomings, it seems, though some are less visible than others.
But let me remember what I choose.
The woman is bad-tempered because she’s terrified.
When Sister Saint Aelphaba neither confirmed nor denied this plan, Oatsie began to understand why the payment to take the green maunt away had been more than generous.
Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes our lives less miserable so that we might be more kind – well, then, let’s have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories. We are a sorry tribe of beasts. We need all the help we can get.
They conducted their love affair in the room above the abandoned corn exchange as the autumn weather came lop-leggedly in from the east: now a warm day, now a sunny one, now four days of cold winds and thin rain.
Oh, if necessity is the mother of invention, who is the Father? Fantasy.
Besides, thought the girl, what miracle didn’t look ridiculous while it was happening? If a miracle was ordinary, it would be like, just, so what?
Those boys and us – we only seem to be sharing a life here. The young are entirely separate. They are someplace else right now. They won’t join us in our lives, really, until they are grown. And by then, who will they become? People I don’t know. And I may not even be here when they get here.
But then, no one ever experienced anyone else’s life. That was the curse of individuality, and maybe the safety of it, too. The privacy of shame, of regret.