Over the Woodward Wall

Girls who are ignored can learn to be impossible, can learn to listen, and look, and learn more than they were ever meant to know.

Sometimes anger is a good, true thing, because the world is so often unfair, and unfairness deserves to be acknowledged. But all too often, anger is another feeling in its Sunday clothes, sadness or envy or--most dangerous of all--fear.

It's fine not knowing things. Not knowing things means you have room to learn, and learning's about the most important thing there is,

No one looks like a girl, or a boy, or an elm tree, or anything else. Someone either is or isn't a thing, and the world can put as many layers on top of the thing as it likes; won't change what's underneath.

Frightened means you've the sense to be afraid, and it's cowards who get things done, more often than not.

None of her seemed to be missing, but it was impossible to see every part of a person, wasn't it? People were like treasure chests, full of secrets that never saw the light of day.

It is a myth that goodness is always lovely and wickedness is always dreadful to behold; the people who say such things have reason for their claims and would rather those reasons not be overly explored.

The very best monsters speak like kings and queens, eloquent and alluring, and the trick is learning not to listen. If you listen to those monsters, they’ll have your heart out before you realize how much danger you’re in.

We’re a poem in the process of being unwritten, a thought about to be unformed. We forget because remembering is bad for us.

Zib wasn’t sure what a heart was for, exactly: knew that grownups put a great deal of weight on whether or not she was listening to her heart over her head, knew that they were quite fond of telling her not to give it carelessly away. Even so, she couldn’t imagine a heart was meant to shatter, or that it was an event which should be treated quite so lightly.

This was a part of me and now it’s gone, and it’s never going to come back again, and I don’t know what it was before it left me; I can’t know, because once a thing is broken past repairing, it doesn’t return.

A piece can represent the whole,” said Meadowsweet. “If the human child wants to hold up a branch and say it means the entire tree, I don’t see where it’s another human child’s place to stop it. Representative symbols are an essential piece of making so many things. Without them, we wouldn’t have maps, or books, or paintings. Peace, human child. Let your fellow be.

If they were both scared together, maybe things weren't so scary after all. Fear was a large and terrible monster. But fear could be conquered if enough people stood up against it.

How can a place be both Up and Under," Avery asks at one point. "Up a tree’s still under the sky," the Crow Girl answers.

It is kinder than it needs to be and cruel enough to be real.

It's better to forget a home than to lose it,

It’s fine not knowing things. Not knowing things means you have room to learn, and learning’s about the most important thing there is, so the more ignorant you are, the more important you can be. But first step is saying that you know you don’t know. Pretending to know things you don’t never helped anyone.

In the same ordinary town, on the same ordinary street, lived two very different, very ordinary children who had never quite managed to cross paths with one another. This, too, was sadly ordinary, for the line dividing children who went to this school from children who went to that school ran right down the middle of their block, forming an invisible barrier that had split them in two before they were old enough to notice. Neither of them had had any say in which school they went to or who their friends became: everything had been decided for them. This is so often the case with children, and few of them will ever come to resent it, for few of them will ever know.

I don’t want to fight people either,” said Zib, making no move to offer the sword back to him. “That doesn’t mean I won’t, if they make me. I’ll keep you safe.” Avery smiled. “I know you will,” he said.

I would say a strong king doesn’t need to play that kind of game with the people he claims to be protecting. I would say it wasn’t fair. The children don’t belong to you, and that means you shouldn’t be using them for bargaining.

No, and no, and no. There’s a glory in refusal that I never thought I’d see.

Bravery has its limits, no matter what the world. Zib tugged on her hair, which sprang right back into place when she let it go. "I don't think you're a monster," she said. "You're talking. You're threatening. But you're still talking, not just attacking. I don't think you're a monster at all." "Some monsters speak, child," said the beast. "The very best monsters speak like kings and queens, eloquent and alluring. And the trick is learning not to listen. If you listen to those monsters, they'll have your heart out before you realize how much danger you are in.

Avery and Zib might have stayed where they were, watching the stranger dwindle in the distance. They might have chosen to run, to seek other ways of warming themselves, for they were both reasonably cautious children with no interest in breaking their parents' hearts. But they were cold, and they were wet, and the Up-and-Under had a way of wearing such caution away, a little bit at a time, replacing them with curiosity and the quiet conviction that sometimes, the right thing was to follow.