The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland - For a Little While

I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?

Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.

I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.

When you’ve lost your girl, it doesn’t much matter where you live. Everywhere is just The Place She Isn’t, and that’s the front and back of it.

It's not a game if you don't cheat, it's just two sods making a mess with fifty-two pieces of paper.

In addition to all the other kinds of magic there is Yes Magic and No Magic, and Mallow is wonderful fierce at No Magic. Sometimes that is the last magic you can hold on to, when all the rest has gone.

A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which you’ll learn all about when you’re older and don’t care anymore.

History is a funny little creature. Do you remember visiting your old Aunt that autumn when the trees shone so very yellow, and how she owned a striped and unsocial cat, quite old and fat and wounded about the ears and whiskers, with a crooked, broken tail? That cat would not come to you no matter how you coaxed and called; it had its own business, thank you, and no time for you. But as the evening wore on, it would come and show some affection or favor to your Aunt, or your Father, or the old end-table with the stack of green coasters on it. You couldn’t predict who that cat might decide to love, or who it might decide to bite. You couldn’t tell what it thought or felt, or how old it might really be, or whether it would one day, miraculously, decide to let you put one hand, very briefly, on its dusty head. History is like that. Of course, unlike your Aunt’s cat, history is going on all around you, all the time, and is often quite lively. Sometimes it rests in a sunbeam for a peaceful century or two, but on the whole, history is always plotting, and it bites very hard. It stalks around the world, fickle and dissatisfied and often angry. It demands to be fed just a little earlier each day, until you find yourself carving meat from the bone as fast as you can, faster than you thought possible, just to satisfy it. Some people have a kind of marvelous talent for calming it and enticing it onto their laps. To some it will never even spare a glance.

Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.

...the villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne.

One of her dearest and handsomest friends was a sorcerer, and from him she had learned so much magic even her hairpins got up and started living serious-minded lives, writing hairpin-ballads, celebrating hairpin-holidays, and inventing several new schools of philosophy.

I’ve always found chess to be a bit too much like real life to provide much enjoyment as a game.

Mabry Muscat looked pleadingly at Mallow, and she could not understand why they all obeyed him -- except that of course the King could eat them, and of course he was King, and did not people everywhere do more or less as they were told when someone with a crown did the telling?

One is always homesick for places where one came to grief.

I suppose if you have ten children one of them might go into government, which is the same as losing a child really.