Quotes from Shannon Hale

Still, I am ashamed that I was ashamed. Marda, I hope you are not ashamed of me for being ashamed. If so, shame on you.

Poets seem to know things that scientists don't. And vice versa. Maybe they balance each other out somehow.

Her mother had certainly made her childhood interesting. In those days, the castle was always crowded with soldiers in spiked armor and creatures that scurried through shadows and hissed at her. Quality time with Mother had included sitting on her lap while the queen met with her generals and hatched plots to kill, conquer, and rule, or spending hours in the dungeon workshop, coughing on smoke and helping Mother make toxic potions and evil spells.

Courage was holding the pirate flag, but he let it droop. Gallantry's lower lip trembled. Tenacity climbed down from the statue, getting his feet wet. Honor, the littlest one, sniffed.

How can you want to marry someone you've never met?" said Miri. "What if you meet him and do like

Oh, it's not that I don't care about her, or anyone else." Ani thought perhaps it was that she cared too much. She was constantly worried about what others thought of her, and how every word she spoke could condemn her further. Ani thought how to explain that to Selia and decided that she could not. Selia's ease with strangers and friends alike made Ani sure she would not understand.

Madeline Hatter was in the Enchanted Forest by sunrise, the best time of day to find charm blossoms. The vibrant pink flowers bloomed only in the morning, twirling on their stems toward the rising sun. Maddie added a few to her basket of wild peppermint, chamomile flowers, and dragon scales.

Especially on an upside-down kind of day like today. It's a last day and also a first day—last day of summer, your first day in Book End. Last day before school starts, first day of a new chapter. It's enough to make a girl feel like she's sitting on her head!

out of her sight.

entered the library, and could do nothing but stare in wonder...She wondered if she should curtsy as if she were entering a chapel.

Twenty-two hours, forty-seven minutes, and eighteen seconds to go!" she said to herself. Not long until her best friends till The End, Raven Queen and Cedar Wood, would return to Ever After High. At last! They both lived far, far away, and calls on the MirrorPhone just weren't the same as a friend by your side.

No. I'm a wreck," she said in the squeaky high voice of one who is determined not to cry. "You do not seem like it," Mrs. Wattlesbrook squeaked back. "Thanks," Charlotte chirped. "I do yoga. Ninety percent of confidence is posture.

Unhappiness can't stick in a person's soul when it's slick with tears.

Madeline Hatter was in the Enchanted Forest by sunrise, the best time of day to find charm blossoms. The vibrant pink flowers bloomed only in the morning, twirling on their stems toward the rising sun. Maddie added a few to her basket of wild peppermint, chamomile flowers, and dragon scales. A white rabbit paused nearby, sniffing some clover. "How

The pane was a stream of moving darkness, and she watched it lighten to silver. It was the first rainfall since she had come to the city. In the dizziness of early morning and little sleep, Ani wondered what she would find outside, if the night and the water had washed it all away, the pasture, the walls, the guards, the palace, and left her with her name again standing in mud and darkness.

Wonderland, Maddie had yet to see

Ani saw herself cleary in the moment, as a face in darkness gains sudden dimensions in a flash of lightning- -a young girl, a silly thing, a lapdog. a broken mare. She did as she was told. She rarely gave thought to her duties or spent deep hours or acted alone. She realized she would never have been capable of taking her mother's place. That realization did not bring relief. Instead, the thought of the journey and her unknown future chilled her skin and pricked her stomach with dread.

Miri's laugh is a tune you love to whistle.

Air so clean you could drink it like water.

She believed now in earnest that fantasy is not practice for what is real—fantasy is the opiate of women.

They walked back through the village, and Miri kept her eyes on the ground before her. The whole world had shifted, and she was not sure she could keep her feet. She was her ma alive again. When Miri returned, she found Marda moved

I didn't think it was possible, but I found a man as crazy intense as I was.

Oh, man," she said. "That didn't, like, take off your real hand, did it?

Customers wandered from book to book like honeybees over flowering sage.