Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

They say that a minute is a minute no matter where you are or what you're doing, but my brain could never grasp that. I think time is a trickster. When I have a lot to do, time shrinks, but when I want something over with, it stretches and yawns, and laughs at my torture. Sometimes the minutes hold hours inside of them.

And that's its own kind of magic - to feel that people who are gone are still here.

Home is a place to get out of the rain It cradles the hurt and mends the pain And no one cares about your name Or the height of your head Or the size of your brain

I didn't think meanness was ever in anyone's destiny. Meanness was a choice.

A name is a powerful thing.

It's difficult to tell how much time is really passing when you're hungry and bored.

Maybe destiny isn't something that just happens. Maybe destiny is something you do. Maybe destiny is like a seed and it grows.

It's hard not to feel guilty when starving people bring you food.

What's that?" "He just fell from that tower!" "Is he dead?" "He's alive, I think." Someone bent over me. "Are you alive?" "I'm alive," I said breathlessly, "and I'm going to have a baby." "What did he just say?" "Something about a baby." "A baby." I said, and then I blacked out.

I woke with my name singing in my ears. It was a beautiful sound, music unlike any in the world. It made me wish that everything could have such a name. Not just people, but animals and villages, and roads and kingdoms, even mountains.

Life would be awfully grim and glum if I couldn't laugh at myself.

It's all the things in the middle that make a person special.

All magic has consequences, Rump. Even small magic can have big consequences.

Just as people laugh at a name like Rump, they fear a name like Red. Red is not a name. It's a color, an evil color. What kind of destiny does that bring?

Martha spouted off a long message to the gnome, including all the details of my injuries, precisely where I was, and who Martha was and her son Helmut. When she asked the gnome to repeat the message, he got it all mixed up, and so she did it again and made it longer, but he still got it all mixed up, and so they went back and forth, and finally Martha lost patience and threw him out the window. The gnome scurried away chanting, “Red for message! Red for message!

King Barf isn’t actually named King Barf. His real name is King Bartholomew Archibald Reginald Fife, a fine, kingly name—a name with a great destiny, of course. But I don’t care how handsome or powerful that name makes you. It’s a mouthful. So for short I call him King Barf, though I’d never say it out loud.

Rumpel. Stiltskin. I heard Mother’s whisper reaching across years and mountains and valleys. Rumpel. Stiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin. The name, my name, shook in my chest. It traveled through my brain and down my arms and fingertips to my legs and toes. The sound of it echoed so loud inside of me I felt I would burst.

A stiltskin is magic at its greatest. Pure magic, un-meddled-with and more powerful than any enchantment or spell.

Rhymes make me feel better when I'm down...When you say the words and the sounds match, it feels like everything in the world is in its place and whatever you say is powerful and true.

It’s difficult to tell how much time is really passing when you’re hungry and bored. They say that a minute is a minute no matter where you are or what you’re doing, but my brain could never grasp that. I think time is a trickster. When I have a lot to do, time shrinks, but when I want something over with, it stretches and yawns, and laughs at my torture. Sometimes the minutes hold hours inside of them. This was one of those times.

The strangeness crept into my dream that night. A woman was spinning by the fireplace. She had long black hair and green eyes, like mine. I had never seen this woman before, but I knew she was my mother. She was spinning straw into gold. She smiled at the gold at first, and the glittering skeins piled around her feet, like a golden pool. But as the pile grew larger, her smile faded. Her spinning slowed and seemed to be difficult, but still she spun. The pile grew and grew and grew, spreading wider and rising higher. When the gold reached my mother’s chin, she looked panicked, like she was submerged in water and didn’t know how to swim. When it reached her eyes, they were full of fear. Finally, the gold covered her whole head, and I couldn’t see her anymore. But the pile of gold still grew. When it reached the ceiling, I woke up.