The Hidden Palace

He'd given her his silences, and she'd filled them with her fears.

She couldn’t understand why some girls seemed to relish drawing their attention. One might as well call out to a wolf, and offer it one’s throat.

But his anger seemed out of reach now, somewhere beyond his sadness.

I am no saint, and he is no monster for me to slay.

It made little sense, and yet it was the truth.

nothing more taxing than a novel to read, something frivolous and French.

It’s easy to consider yourself altruistic when you live among the poor and the downtrodden. But if you were removed from their side, it wouldn’t be long before they faded from your mind.

Francis couldn’t regret the domestication that had placed the Winston name alongside the likes of Astor and Vanderbilt—and yet a certain vitality, he felt, had been lost along the way.

Thus a woman is strong by nature, for she was created from a bone, while a man, created from earth, is weak, and quickly dissolves

Thus a woman is strong y nature, for she was created from a bone, while a man, created from earth, is weak, and quickly dissolves.

To keep an economical kitchen, you must learn to be flexible, and salvage your mistakes. If a plan falls through, then change the plan.

Greenwich Village was a mix of laughter and furious discussion, of immigrants and dilettantes who drank champagne and talked gaily of anarchy.

You, too, would be free, if it were not for the work of men's hands.

it struck him as the sort of thing that adults liked to say when what they meant was I was terrified, so I ran for it.

like a hack-saw in a bakery case.

They have so many boxes that they must number them to keep track.

It reassured the girls that cooking was a skill, to be learned like any other—not some secret art that could only be gleaned in a loving home, at a mother’s side.

Of all the myriad races of thinking creatures in the world, the two that most delight in telling stories are the flesh-and-blood humans and the long-lived, fiery jinn.