Quotes from Anne Ursu

Now she would be part girl, part hardening gray sludge. And no one would notice the difference.

this is a magical land where every one of you can find exactly the book you need at any given time—even if you don't know you need it. Every one of you can find the book that will change your life.

So, if someone's changed overnight -- by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle -- you have to show them what's good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn't save them, they're not worth saving.

That was before Iris understood that there is a difference between the things you have in your head and the things you present to the world—that sometimes you have to fit yourself into certain shapes, ones other people can easily name.

vomiting baby fountains.

Part of being grown up is acting the way you're supposed to act, even if you don't feel like it. Can you be grown up for me?

Hugging himself, Oscar leaned against the pantry wall. For two days all he had wanted was for Caleb to come back, and now he was back and Oscar had made a mess of things: he had angered half the customers and confused the other half, and the coin boxes did not look as they should, and [rich, noble] people were complaining about him, and he couldn't look at anybody, and [redacted] was dead, and Oscar was odd. 'What if he doesn't keep me?

The woods do not mean you well.

Everything and everyone was so hungry. The monster. The Barrow folk, buying everything up when danger lurked. The City people, clutching at pretty little enchanted things. Substituting magic for people. The shining people's ancestors, when the plague threatened, ignoring the warnings of the wizards, assuring themselves magic would keep them safe as they themselves brought death upon the entire island.

If shadows were caused by the interplay between light and Life, a child's was still forming. An adult's was inextricably bound to his body, but a child had a tenuous relationship to his own permanence, and thus, his own shadow.

I'm not really made for people." Callie exhaled. "You're not made at all, Oscar. Don't you see? After everything that's happened this week? You get to do the making.

That's what happens on journeys, the things you find are not necessarily what you had gone looking for.

Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories.

case any dirt had accumulated overnight.

the small garden was just a slip of earth on the side of the house, bit it seemed like its own universe. The sweet, sharp scent of hundreds of flowers greeted her. Even in the night their colors sang it was a thick, lush blanket of color- luxurious purple and electric blue and sunshine yellow and cheery red. It was like a movie version of an enchanted harden, gorgeous, vivid, and too beautiful to be real. She could dive into the purple of the violets and live there.

In woods where the woodsmen told lies, maybe it was the wolves who told the truth.