The Merry Spinster

She could not understand how she was here, when she had never said yes to being brought anywhere. She could not remember speaking to him, much less agreeing. She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.

I don't mind it so much when they're fully dead, you understand. Something that's supposed to be dead, and is dead, that's no surprise but there's something about a creature that GOING to be dead but isn't yet, something that KNOWS it's going to be dead and doesn't want to be. I've never liked that.

Perhaps you would not like being married to me,' Beauty said. 'I do not know how to talk to people, and I have terrible taste in shirts.

I expect it's hard for witches ... now that most people work in shops and factories, and haven't any crops to ruin. They must be terribly sad, those witches, to have to go from blighting wheat fields to blighting houseplants.

Then: “A man in a mustache is at the door to see Beauty,” Sylvia said one afternoon. “He looks as though he were going to speak German at me.

Aren't you supposed to be an educated woman?' 'No. Purely decorative. I read a story once; it was terrible and my head ached for days.

If you will not marry me,” Mr. Beale said, “perhaps I will die of grief.” Beauty’s expression did not change. “I’m so unused to compliments. I’m afraid that I take them quite seriously.

Being beautiful had never prevented her from remaining in the woods alone before, but there was nothing she could do about it. Beauty was what gave him the right to talk to her as if they had been introduced, and take her hand, and make her wear his cloak, and take her from her tree and to his home.

Fear being the operative word, and not panic, which is why most of us have learned to start each incident log with a command like “Fear not,” or “Dread not,” or “Be thou not dismayed,” or some other variation thereof

Humans die,” said the grandmother, “and humans suffer too, for they lead short lives and when they are dead, no one eats them. They are stuffed in boxes and hidden in the dirt, or else set on fire and turned into cinders, so no one else can make any use of them; they are a prodigiously selfish race and consider themselves their own private property even in death.

To be grateful is to be wakeful and watchful,” Paul said. “To be grateful is to remember. To be grateful is to acknowledge one’s lawful debts and keep a balanced ledger.

Does Tess like me?” David asked. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Alison said. “She hasn’t done anything to suggest she doesn’t, has she?” “No, not exactly, only—she looks at one as though she disapproves of how one parts one’s hair, or spells one’s name, somehow.

Alison had a habit of replying only to a selected portion of David’s conversation, that which she considered worth discussing, and blandly ignoring the rest. It was a terrifically effective strategy; he had never been able to drag her back to a point once she had decided to abandon it.

Bridegrooms always know their true brides, through the strategic use of horse heads and love tokens.

Perhaps you would not like being married to me,” Beauty said. “I do not know how to talk to people, and I have terrible taste in shirts.

After her mother left, Beauty picked up one of her books and pointed her face at it and turned the pages—almost as if she were reading it.

I should like to get a soul,” said the girl. “The prince has one already. I might have his. I have put my mouth on his mouth, and surely that counts for something, even among savages.

She could not remember speaking to him, much less agreeing. She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.

She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.

Aquinas says passion deserves neither praise nor blame, and I have no quarrel with that. If acedia, that noonday demon, is a kind of passion - species of sadness, as the Damascene says - then it is no sin in itself. Yet surely passions can be blameworthy when attached to unworthy objects. Surely the immoderation of such spiritual torpor, if left unchecked, is, if not yet full sin in bloom, at least the error that may in time lead to sin. For our story, it all led to sin in the end, and it all began with the listlessness and self-forgetting that comes not from god. (Cast your bread upon the waters)