Quotes from Shannon Hale

I couldn't remember the last time I had stayed up into the squeaky hours of the night because I couldn't put a book down, and that was a tragedy.

No small thing, a bee's sting When it enters the heart Not so benign, the growing vine When it tears stone apart

Just like the old adage--what you dislike most in other people is what you dislike the most in yourself--

I'm not hopeless, that's the problem. I'm too hopeful, if anything ... I'm so thick-headed it's taken me this long to give up on men, but I can't give up completely, you know? So I ... I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can't reject me because he isn't real!

I'm the sheen on water, Rin thought. I'm a looking glass. I'm not real.

and with my last thought I felt some real sympathy for those poor chickens.

I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.

It doesn't seem to matter what we think...The prince will come up here and look at us as if we're barrels in a trader's wagon. And if I'm salt pork and he doesn't care for salt pork, then there's nothing I can do.

Finn leaped from his horse to greet Enna, and she entwined herself into him, their arms around each other, their faces close. Thoug they did not kiss, Rin thought that the way they looked at each other was even more intimate. 'Let's get married,' Enna was saying with yearning in her voice. 'Please, let's get married right now.' Finn put his face into her neck and whispered something that made her hum.

In some ways, I don't feel as if I had a choice. Looking back at my childhood, even before I could read and write, I was making up stories. I love reading and I love telling stories, and the times in my life when I've tried to ignore that part of me, I've gone a little crazy. Characters start tugging on my sleeves, words start haunting me, and I feel generally unsatisfied. Really, being a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice.

No wolf falters before the bite So strike No hawk wavers before the dive Just strike

Miss Erstwhile: "It is such a relief, Mr. Nobley, to already know that you find this exercise vulgar and your partner unworthy. It saves us the idle chitchat." Mr. Nobley: "And yet you chat away.

You forgot to cough!" he said. "Sorry." She coughed. "Your sneakiness is dangerous. Next time that chisel will lodge itself in my head." "Now, Peder, there's plenty of stone around here for carving. No need to practice on your own face." He stroked his chin. "You're right, my jaw is already chiseled to perfection." She agreed, but she felt too silly to say so aloud.

No matter that we could be beheaded for this," said Esa. "Heads are overrated." "Yes, they are so unfashionable," said Miri, imitating an Aslandian accent. "This spring, ladies of style are wearing their feathers in their necks.

Her smile was peculiar - it made her nose wrinkle, not as though she smelled something unpleasant, but more that she was so amused, her whole face wanted to be a part of the smile.

It was karma, it was kismet, it was magic. It doesn't matter how it happened, just that it did.

The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.

No one had ever called her wild before. She wanted to be wild now, for him. Wild seemed more enticing then a bowl of berries.

Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff. Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze. Words can sing.

Goose girl, may I kiss you?' She answered by... kissing him first.

Listen to your second thought, or the third might be too late.

Don't beat yourself up," said Charlotte. "True love can be so easily mistaken for other things-friendship, humane concern, indigestion...

A heart's a heart, in a child or a man. You are tougher than you feel right now. Your roots are deep, your canopy's spread wide. You're going to show everyone what it means to be a king.

I need to admit up front that I don't know how to have a fling. I'm not good at playing around and then saying good-bye. I'm throwing myself at your feet because I'm hoping for a shot at forever." Henry Jenkins/Mr. Nobley