I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies of their bodies – and those bodies were so dear to me!

Funny how “question” contains the word “quest” inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.

In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands...

And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.

Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.

Monsters almost always are culture’s way of working out their fears.

If he closed his eyes he could dwell in the circuit of air that had once held her, he could hold his breath and be inside her again, within the close and burning borders of...

Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither.

I tell them: don’t depend on a woodsman in the third act. I tell them: look for sets of three, or seven. I tell them: there’s always a way to survive. I tell them: you...

Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.

What is it, Master Calligrapher, that little girls do in the way that spiders weave?” sleeve asked primly.The Calligrapher coughed, for his room was very dusty, and there was dust even on his eyelashes, and...

Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it...

And hell, sometimes the best thing is to put on a black dress and become a wicked stepmother. There’s power in that, if you’re after power.

Everyone has their invisible cloak of all things past.

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor...

It seems like every few years a big name author will holler something about how evil, heinous, and morally wrong fan fiction and fan fiction writers are, and then the Internet gets all upset and...

Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For...

All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.

it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation

I will age for you, if it pleases you. I will match you, wrinkle for wrinkle, grey hair for grey hair, crease for crease, wrinkle for wrinkle. You will be so beautiful when you are...

You’ll forgive the flowery talk, won’t you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.

That’s your first hint that something’s alive. It says no.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is...

Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.

Yes, Marya thought, the smell of woodsmoke and old snow pushing back her long black hair. Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter...

I suppose if you have ten children one of them might go into government, which is the same as losing a child really.

In Russian fairy tales, the narrative flows a little differently. In those stories, you won’t find a tale for Cinderella, one for Snow White, one for Rapunzel. Instead, a peculiar cast of characters recurs over...

Fantasy is my heart and love. And I just want to play in that garden for the rest of my life.

I see you go bare-shod. This is most likely extremely sensible. Shoes are no end of trouble for girls. . . . How many have danced to death in slippers of silk and glass and...

We are halves, but we make an infinite whole.

Let me tell you something, kid,” said Mrs. H of Boston and Beacon Hill. “Magic is just a word for what’s left to the powerless once everyone else has eaten their fill.

When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their...

Stories,’ the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, ‘are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

Just about every science whiz can tell you how he or she took apart the TV or the radio when they were kids just to see how it worked. To see what the world was...

Why should I care about you first kiss,’ he said. ‘You can kiss anyone you like. But sometimes if you wanted to kiss me, that would be all right, too.

Your past’s a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can’t hurt anyone.

The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.

Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I’ve eaten my share. That’s lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation,...

Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they...

You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a...

A voice saying that other word an alive thing must learn, that other word as necessary to living as taking in fuel and making of it movement, music, leaves, roots, dimetrodon spikes, dancing, libraries, children:Yes!...

The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is...

books.” The first book I ever read on my own was The Neverending Story. I studied classics at university, and in ancient literature, monsters, witches, magic, curses, and impossible machines aren’t genre, they’re just Tuesday...

All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.

Even if you hadn’t entirely deposed (and possibly killed) not one but two governments and destabilized all sorts of political regions you couldn’t even pronounce, let alone draft up constitutional monarchies for, even if you’d...

Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from...

No matter what you write, you actually can’t help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.