Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.

If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.

It's the endlessly thinking about yourself that causes such heart shame.

Approval is overrated. Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it.

I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.

The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective.

And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.

Immortality is a chancy thing; it cannot be promised or earned. Perhaps it cannot even be identified for what it is.

How shallow the words are, really - She is a witch. One might as well say, She is a mother, thinks Iris; that about covers the same terrain, doesn't it?

...What is the use of beauty? i have lived my life surrounded by painters, and still I do not know the answer. But i suspect, some days, that beauty helps protect the spirit of mankind, swaddle it and succor it, so that we might survive. Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes or lives less miserable so that we might be more kind-well, then, lets have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories.

Small steps to the madhouse still get us there at last

To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows

So let my hands and my face make their way in this world, let my hungry eyes see, my tongue taste.

...looking at him makes her feel like laughing all over - as if she could laugh not just with her mouth but with her eyes, her heart, her very limbs.

SELF-MOCKERY IS AN UGLIER THING THAN ANY HUMAN FACE, IRIS... YOU ARE SMART AND YOU ARE KIND. DON'T BETRAY THOSE IMPULSES IN YOURSELF. DON'T BELABOR THE LACK OF PHYSICAL BEAUTY, WHICH IN ANY CASE EVENTUALLY FLEES THOSE WHO HAVE IT AND MAKES THEM SAD.

...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.

It’s the place of the story, beginning here, in the meadow of late summer flowers, thriving before the Atlantic storms drive wet and winter upon them all.

Ah, the inner eye blinks, and the spirit trembles, at the dangerous cost of seeing one's self as one is.

Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures.

Is this the main thing that painters of portraits care about? The person on the verge of becoming someone else?

She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

And it's a cold place the world, especially when warmed by arsen.

You can endure any sort of prison if you can apprehend a window in the dark.

What is strange is that we may remember what we have done, but not always why we did it.

To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or defer it.

Only he with the hobbled foot knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can appreciate what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us. That we in our sinful souls can ever imagine charity- 'She can't go on for a moment. 'We may not always be able to practice charity, but that in this world we can even imagine it at all! That act of daring requires the greatest challenge,

In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings. When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats.

When the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn’t any reclaiming it or revising it.

YOU HAVE YOUR OWN LIFE TO LIVE, IRIS, AND AT ITS END, THE ONLY OPINION THAT AMOUNTS TO ANYTHING IS THAT WHICH GOD BESTOWS.

Forgive us our trespasses,” says Margarethe, “and get out of our way.