Emma Donoghue · 228 pages
Rating: (5.5K votes)
“The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.”
“And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.”
“Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.”
“There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.”
“I looked in my mirror and saw, not myself, but every place I'd never been.”
“Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.”
“I was beautiful, or so my father told me. My oval mirror showed me a face with nothing written on it. I had suitors aplenty but wanted none of them: their doggish devotion seemed too easily won. I had an appetite for magic, even then. I wanted something improbably and perfect as a red rose just opening.”
“Your songs are still out there on the clifftop, hanging in the air for you when you want them. Wish to speak and you will speak, girl. Wish to die and you can do it. Wish to live and here you are.”
“If he guessed his mistake, if he wanted me back, I thought, let him suffer and work for it as I had worked and suffered. Let him follow me over a mountain of iron and a lake of glass, and wear out three swords in my defense. But at my truest, lying awake trying to count the stars, I knew my prince would not follow. In my mind's eye I saw him in his palace, stroking the gold and silver and starry dresses which were fading now like leaves in winter, weeping for a spotless princess who did not exist, who had drowned in the river of time.”
“So then she took me home, or I took her home, or we were both somehow taken to the closest thing.”
“No point my telling you he's not worth it, I suppose. . . I've seen enough men in my time. Whoever he is, he's not worth what you'll pay.”
“Perhaps we get, not what we deserve, but what we demand.”
“In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wish I hadn't.”
“One of them asked what was in my skirts to make them so heavy, and I said, Knives, and he took his hand off my thigh and never touched me again.”
“Once I was a stupid girl; now I am an angry woman.”
“Keep your heart infinitesimally small and sorrow will never spy it, never plunge, never flap away with your heart in her claws.”
“So when one spring in spite of all this good advice I fell in love, it felt like disaster. I took a tiny bite and it exploded in my stomach. Love splashed through every cranny, hauled on every muscle, unlocked every joint. I was so full of astonishment, I felt ten feet tall. My shoulders itched as if wings might break through.”
“Daughter, he said in a voice like old wood breaking, can you ever forgive me?
I could only answer his question with one of my own. Putting my hand over his mouth, I whispered, Which of us would not sell all we had to stay alive?”
“That night my new skin was red silk, shivering in the breeze.”
“Under the thousand crystal candelabras I danced with ten elderly gentlemen who had nothing to say but did not let that stop them. I answered only, Indeed and Oh yes and Do you think so?”
“My names were hand-me-downs too: girl, the creature, or, most often, you there.”
“What this good man had sworn to protect me from was not the same as what I feared. I trusted that he would never let anything hurt me, but he would never let anything touch me either.”
“I heard a knocking in my skull, and kept running to the door, but there was never anyone there.”
“When I was as young as you are now I learned how to save my own life.”
“The thing is to take your life in your hands.”
“But hoping," he said, "is how the impossible can be possible after all.”
“I hope, or I could not live.”
“Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.”
“Within the mind are all the resources required for successful living. Ideas are present in the consciousness, which when released and given scope to grow and take shape, can lead to successful events.”
“Man sets his hand to games of power and influence, he quests for far horizons and wealth beyond imagining. He thinks to own what cannot be possessed. He hews the ancient trees to broaden his grazing lands; he mines the deep caves and topples the standing stones. He embraces a new faith with fervor and, perhaps, with sincerity. But he grows ever further from the old things. He can no longer hear the heartbeat of the earth, his mother. He cannot smell the change in the air; he cannot see what lies beyond the veil of shadows. Even his new god is formed in his own image, for do they not call him the son of man? By his own choice he is cut adrift from the ancient cycles of sun and moon, the ordered passing of the seasons. And without him, the Fair Folk dwindle and are nothing. They retreat and hide themselves, and are reduced to the clurichaun with his little ale jug; the brownie who steals the cow's milk at Samhain; the half-heard wailing of the banshee. They become no more than a memory in the mind of a frail old man; a tale told by a crazy old woman.”
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