The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

No one belongs when they are new to this world. All children are Changelings.

We have all of us got it jumbled up. You never feel so grown up as when you are eleven, and never so young and unsure as when you are forty. That is why time is a rotten jokester and no one ought to let him in to dinner.

I have to do it myself. That's what a Queen does. She saves herself.

She'd thought she left feeling helpless behind long ago - only we never leave helpless behind. It is a country in which we all hold passports.

You gotta be nice to strangers even when they are the worst, because they don't know you well enough to understand how shut your big face can mean I've missed you more than the whole world can know.

The tales lovers tell each other about how they met are hushed and secret things. They change year by year, for we all meet many times as we grow up and become different and new and exciting people--and this never stops, even for a minute, even when we are ninety.

The tyrannosaurus looked a little shamefaced - but only a little, for dinosaurs would rather drown in tar than admit they're wrong. That unfortunate attitude played a key role in their extinction.

Folk dress in all manner of finery and wonderful hats to go and watch the races, but only if it's horses doing the barreling that day. This, at least, is understandable, for horses, in secret, love hats more than any other creature. It is a horse's tragedy that they can never properly wear one.

Shut up," hissed the Marquess. "I chose it, you miserable, rouged-up idiots! Why shouldn't I have a boy's title? People listen to boys! They fear boys—they fear a King and hope a Queen will show them mercy! Why shouldn't I be a Marquess? I rule the world! I say how things are pronounced! I say what belongs to boys and what doesn't!

When you are first hurt, your anger is fresh and bright and clean. It is hot and eager to defeat injustice. It makes you sharp and keen and quick. so that you can outrace your hurt and leave it lying on some faraway ground where it happened. This is why children cry so bitterly and scream until their faces go read at the smallest hunger or loneliness. They must get terribly, piercingly angry so that they can get out in front of all the little hurts of being new, or else they will never get free of them. But anger can go off like milk in the icebox. It can go hard and rotting and turn everything around it rotting too. By the time you have made your peace, your anger has reeked up your whole heart, it's so gunked up with fuming. That's why you must wash your anger every now and again, or else you can't even move an inch.

All Librarians are members of the Catalogue. That's what you call a coven when it's made up of Librarians instead of witches. Librarians have sorted and alphabetized all the magic that ever thought to put a rabbit and a hat together. Who do you think invented Special Collections?

Be nice to Fairyland. She is old and tender of heart and when her feelings are hurt, she cries volcanoes.

That is what happens when a person lives alone for so long - no one else can change their ways.

Yes, September, We have all of us got it jumbled up. You never feel so grown up as when you are eleven, and never so young and unsure as when you are forty. That is why time is a rotten jokester and no one aught to let him in to dinner.

All time is mean young man. It takes and does not give, it rushes when you wish it would linger and drags when you wish is would fly. It flows sullenly, only in one direction, when it might take a thousand turns. You cannot get anything back once time has taken it. Time cheats and steals and lies and kills. If anyone could arrest it, they would have time behind bars faster than you can check your watch.

Every cat knows how to keep his owner feeding them: You may scratch and bite ninety-nine times, but the hundredth time, you must leap into a lap and press your nose to their nose. Rules are for dogs.

Wife sounded like something exciting, something daring, something a bit scoundrelly, like pirate or bandit. And they were bandits, of course.

I will always be here, in my old chair by the door, waiting for you, whenever you are lonesome. Our little house will always look just the same as when we first blew the dust off the bookshelves, and the kettle will always be just about to boil. Sometimes I will be young, and sometimes I will be old, sometimes you will be young, and sometimes you will be old. But for as long as forever, I will keep a room for you. I swear by the sparkle in my eye and the spring in your step.

And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their big rules until you are ready to rule yourself.

Flowers are always more serious than they appear.

I didn't want to do my mathematics homework back home. Or mend the fence or mind the chickens. But I did it anyway. Just because a person doesn't want to do a thing doesn't mean they ought to shirk.

horses, in secret, love hats more than any other creature. It is a horse’s tragedy that they can never properly wear one.

All coral in every world think of Australia the way that you and I think of Mesopotamia - it is the ancestral paradise of their civilization and they send it Valentines each February.

The Heart of Fairyland is a story," she said, and she felt so warm and light and full of rightness of it that she thought she might faint.

... I think you like bossing around a world or two. You've been doing it all along, only now you've got a very fine hat. Of course, it is always easier to fight the powerful than to wield power yourself." And that is the last lesson of childhood: You spend all your years fighting against the injustice of big folk and their big rules unti you are ready to rule yourself.

The Land of Parents is strange and full of peril.

[Y]ou'll be part of the family. Able to share all we have, so long as you share what you have. We make our lives into a potluck dinner—everyone brings their best with lots of pepper and no one goes hungry. Or lonely.

Endings are rubbish. No such thing. Never has been, never will be. There is only the place where you choose to stop talking. Everything else goes on forever.

She didn't like to say things flatly, but sometimes it is the perfect antidote to someone trying to convince you the noose in their hand is a lovely silk ribbon for your hair.

I don't have a care what you want, you horrid little insect," she hissed through her smile. "The Crown chose you. You are Queen of Fairyland. It's about as appetizing to myself personally as a pie full of filthy, crawling worms, but it's a fact. You can pull and pry and blubber, but that Crown won't come off until you're dead or deposed. I could cut you down in a heart's-breadth, but the rest of these ruffians would have my head. They take regicide terribly personally. Make no mistake; this present predicament is entirely your fault, you and your wretched Dodo's Egg. You will want my help to sort it limb from limb. You are a stranger in Fairyland—oh, it's charming how many little vacations you take here! But this is not your home. You don't know these people from a beef supper. But I do. I recognize each and every one. And if you show them that you are a vicious little fool with no more head on her shoulders than a drunken ostrich, they will gobble you up and dab their mouths with that thing you call a dress. You may not like me, but I have survived far more towering acts of mythic stupidity than you. I am good. I know what power weighs. If you have any wisdom in your silly monkey head, from this moment until the end of your reign—which I do hope will come quickly—you and I shall become the very best of friends. After all, Queen September, a Prime Minister lives to serve.