Quotes from Anne Ursu

Someone who thinks of possessing a fountain made of a winged baby with water shooting out of its mouth must not have too many troubles.

You can't just kill a swan and wrap yourself in its skin, you know. It takes something from you. In her case it took the thing that she wanted most.

Oscar did not know what he was supposed to be feeling right now, what all the adults behind him would be expecting him to feel. He did not even know what he was, in fact, feeling. Except, whatever it was, it was a lot. Too much. More than bodies could hold.

They were princesses once, charged with saving the kingdom from a dragon, and whoever could defeat it would be queen. Daisy used strength, Amelia wits, and Isabelle fell in love with the dragon, because that's the sort of girl she was. She rid the kingdom of the dragon, and then made it its king.

She saw signs of another village in the distance—she smelled smoke and saw the faint glow of something like civilization. But there was nothing for her there. She had to go get Jack now, and anyway, she was safer out here with the wolves.

The witch raised one careful eyebrow. "I? I want nothing," she told Hazel. "Don't you see? I want nothing.

It turned out she did not need the compass. It was easy to head in the other direction from the lair of the witch. All you had to do was move away from the thing pulling at you.

What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?

There are ways to do things, ways to act with people, and I do not understand them. I cannot understand what people mean when they talk. I do not do things right. I do not feel things right. I do not see things right. I am not...I'm not made of the same thing as everyone else.' The baker took in a deep breath. 'I think if you'll look around, my boy,' he said gently, 'you'll find that no one is quite right. But we all do the best we can.

It would not hurt, after all, to walk into the woods.

There is something in the magic we have that is greater than the magic we can do.

He's gone now. He did something terrible, but...he did good things, too. And he kept us well. And it's all right if you are sad.

A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.

This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.

That was the point where she was supposed to sound tough, like she was someone to be reckoned with, like she was the sort of person witches should listen to. Was this really her plan? She sounded like a child.

Hazel shrugged. She heard Bobby's voice in her head and wondered why it was she who was not allowed to hurt anyone.

The Asterians didn't call themselves anything special, because when everyone else refers to you as the shining people, you really don't have to do it yourself.

She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her.

she wore weird baggy clothes and seemed like the sort of person who might tesser in some dark and stormy night.

Ladders were not inherently dangerous, he told himself, people climbed them every day, and most of them lived.

You see," the lord explained, "everyone else has them. You wouldn't want your child to be the only one who had flaws. What would it be like for them?

Something was wrong with him - and down deep he'd known his whole life. Maybe the wards had even said something. (You are not right, boy.) Maybe the other children had. (What's wrong with you?) Maybe it had happened while he watched one child after another walk off with a family from the Eastern Villages, with a merchant or a farmer. (You know no one will ever take you, right?) Maybe he'd even said it to himself.

There are differences between facts and truths. Facts are something you now in your brain; truths are things you know in your heart.

Something rose in Oscar's chest, like a flower blossoming all at once. It grew until it filled him and threatened to spill over everywhere. The words [he] spoke touched a longing so deep Oscar hadn't even known it was there.