Quotes from Shannon Hale

Besides being witty and funny and maybe the best novel ever written, it's also the most perfect romance in all of literature and nothing in life can ever measure up, so I spend my life limping in its shadow.

I wasn't aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.

Thank you," Becky whispered... "I wouldn't have survived that stool. It would have been 'Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.'" With rings on your fingers and bells on your toes even, " he said. "Curious that meeting you is more nursery rhyme than fairy tale. If I see a farmer's wife with a butcher's knife, I'm running and not looking back." "And I'll have no nonsense from my dish and spoon.

Here's the thing about home: you can create it most anywhere, as long as you gather your people around you.

Gerti didn't ask for help." Miri swallowed and tried to calm her quavering voice. "It was my fault." "So it was. Now you all have learned that those who speak out of turn choose punishment for themselves and anyone they speak to." "So if I speak to you, Tutor Olana, will you get the lashes?

We were quiet, two tiny specks glued down by gravity, peering at a universe that didn't notice us back.

Sometimes things aren't impossible the first time I try, because I don't know they're impossible yet. I probably couldn't do it again, though.

I always knew it was ill-fated, but he truly believed I would be his bride. I guess I'd never realized that before. He had taken my mucker hand and looked at my mottled face and believed we would wed. And he hadn't seemed sorry. In fact, he'd swooped me up in a corridor and kissed me. That set me to crying.

You'd eat a plate, and call it pleasantly crunchy.

To be powerful, a kiss should make a journey, be its own story--begin with hesitation, move to realization, then melt into bliss.

Charlotte wondered if she would have recognized the crazy much earlier if he looked more like Steve Buscemi then Mr. Medieval Hotness.

A need, a need, a need have I A wish, a wish, a wish, I sigh

We stand up for the farmers Who can't keep enough to eat We walk out for the workers Who don't know the taste of meat We run forward for the children With no shoes upon their feet We will march this kingdom down We will break the golden crown

It must be a marvelous thing to feel so sure, to be able to meet someone's eyes and not look away.

That year, when the trees burned the fire of late summer into their leaves and the ground mist was a ghost of the river, long and wet and cold, the aunt looked from her windows to the walls around her and imagined another winter inside them. She began to see the world as a bird sees bars, and she scratched her arms beneath her sleeves.

Sometimes I think they're all ridiculous. There I was, a sensible person with thoughts in my head, offering a solution. And they wouldn't listen. What aggravation, to believe I can help and yet not be allowed. -Dashti

Rock Canyon OB-GYN: We're GYNO-MITE!

Um… I guess that's that," said Cerise. "That?" said Maddie. "That is never that. This is that. Or else that is this. And this is definitely not that. So let's go to the dance.

Age gave her the peace, at least, to live inside that moment like a poet - to not sacrifice the beauty to the anxiety of What Next, but to just observe.

Ease up, nasty little frigid pixies

So she tried all the magical passwords she could think of. "Abracadabra. Open sesame. Sim salabim. Alakazam. Hocus pocus. Voilà. Please.

I think sometimes, being silent and watching, can change a person.

A few minutes later, Miss Charming gasped. But then, Miss Charming gasped a lot. She gasped when someone shut a door too loudly; she gasped when there were sausages for breakfast. She sometimes gasped and then coughed, as if she'd meant to cough from the beginning and gotten the two confused.

In movies, we are accustomed to seeing handsome actors. It's so commonplace on the screen, large or small, that we barely note it as extraordinary. But in life, rarely do we encounter an onslaught of beauty, entire a hive of handsomeness, find ourselves awash in an ocean of attractiveness, drowning in a miasma of hotness.