But what is character? How solid? We cut our hair, we shave our beards, we lose a limb. We remain ourselves. In dreams, however, we swap identities licentiously. We sabotage the structures of our character without a thought.
Lost is not an address, it’s not permission to fail, it’s not an excuse.
Those who are roped into bed at night often fall into delusions of flight.
The family was still hard-pressed for money, and dreamed of savory treats to eat, but they had the warmth of one another, and enough on which to live, and in most parts of the world that is called plenty.
There is a limit to the nonsense even a dream can attempt.
Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through. To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.
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.