Soman Chainani · 488 pages
Rating: (45.1K votes)
“In the forest of primeval
A school for Good and Evil
Twin towers like two heads
One for the pure
And one for the wicked
Try to escape you'll always fail,
The only way out is
Through a fairytale.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“What's the one thing Evil can never have... and the one thing Good can never do without?”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Beauty can only fight the truth for so long...”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Hold on to me!” Tedros yelled, hacking briars with his training sword.Dazed, Agatha clung to his chest as he withstood thorn lashes with moans of pain. Soon he had the upper hand and pulled Agatha from the Woods towards the spiked gates, which glowed in recognition and pulled apart, cleaving a narrow path for the two Evers. As the gates speared shut behind them,Agatha looked up at limping Tedros, crisscrossed with bloody scratches, blue shirt shredded away.
“Had a feeling Sophie was getting in through the Woods,” he panted, hauling her up into slashed arms before she could protest. “So Professor Dovey gave me permission to take some fairies and stakeout the outer gates. Should have known you’d be here trying to catch her yourself.”
Agatha gaped at him dumbly.
“Stupid idea for a princess to take on witches alone,” Tedros said, dripping sweat on her pink dress.
“Where is she?” Agatha croaked. “Is she safe?”
“Not a good idea for princesses to worry about witches either,” Tedros said, hands gripping her waist. Her stomach exploded with butterflies.
“Put me down,” she sputtered—
“More bad ideas from the princess.”
“Put me down!”Tedros obeyed and Agatha pulled away.
“I’m not a princess!” she snapped, fixing her collar.
“If you say so,” the prince said, eyes drifting downward.Agatha followed them to her gashed legs, waterfalls of brilliant blood. She saw blood blurring— Tedros smiled.
“One . . . two . . . three . . .”She fainted in his arms.
“Definitely a princess,” he said.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Gently Agatha touched her face in the mirror, glowing from inside.
A face no one recognized because it was so happy.
There could be no turning back now. The bread crumbs on the dark trail were gone. Instead, she had the truth to guide her. A truth greater than any magic.
I've been beautiful all along.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“You’re not evil, Sophie," Agatha whispered, touching her decayed cheek. "You’re human."
Sophie smiled weakly. “Only if I have you.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“- You gave me a dead frog for my birthday!
- To remind you we all die and end up rotting underground eaten by maggots so we should enjoy our birthdays while we have them. I found it thoughtful.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Agatha: "If you say anything smug or stuck-up or shallow, I'll have Reaper follow you home."
Sophie: "But then I can't talk!”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Sophie: "For the Create-A-Tale Competition, your story ended with Snow White eaten by vultures and Cinderella drowning her-self in a tub."
Agatha: "I thought it was a better ending.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Agatha wondered what these girls' souls would wish for. Depth, perhaps.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“After graduating from our school, they went into the Woods expecting epic battles with monsters and wizards, only to find their fairy tales unfold right in their own houses. They didn’t realize that villains are the ones closest to us. They didn’t realize that to find a happy ending, a hero must first look right under his nose.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Everytime you do a Good Deed with true intention, your soul grows purer.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“« "You see, it doesn’t matter what we are, Sophie.”
Lady Lesso leaned so close she just had to whisper.
“It’s what we do. »”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“If there was one word Agatha dreaded more than "ball", it was "dancing".”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“My behavior last night was poor."
"Poor?" Agatha coughed. "You pushed me through a window!”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a Never, Ever, or whatever. In the end, the fairest of them all wins.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“First time I told my dad I liked a girl, he slathered me in honey and sealed me in a bear den for a night. Haven’t liked one since.” “First time I told my mother I fancied someone, she baked me in an oven for an hour,” Mona agreed, green skin paling. “I never think about boys now.” “First time I liked a boy, my dad killed him.” The group stopped and stared at Arachne. “Maybe Sophie just had bad parents,” she said.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Our towers aren't fair and lovely they're valor and honor that's what good is.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“But when children continued to disappear every four years, the village shifted their attention to burrowing bears, then phantom bears, then bears in disguise . . . until it became clear it wasn’t bears at all.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Agatha, what do you see when you look in the mirror?"
"I don't look in mirrors."
"Why is that?"
"Because horses and hogs don't sit around ogling their reflections!”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“They dig inside your soul and find your greatest wish! (Very helpful if you've lost your tongue or your voice and need to tell a prince to kiss you.)”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Top-half students may use the Groom Room. Bottom-half students should use the time to reflect upon their mediocrity!”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“So there’s no way home?” Agatha asked, eyes welling. “Not unless it’s your ending,” the School Master said. “And going home together is a rather far-fetched ending for two girls fighting for opposing sides, don’t you think?”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Naturally the villagers blamed bears. No one had ever seen a bear in Gavaldon, but this made them more determined to find one. Four years later, when two more children vanished, the villagers admitted they should have been more specific and declared black bears the culprit, bears so black they blended with the night. But when children continued to disappear every four years, the village shifted their attention to burrowing bears, then phantom bears, then bears in disguise. . . Until it became clear it wasn't it wasn't bears at all.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“It doesn't matter what we are, it matters what we do.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Now there are five rules that separate Good from Evil,” the gnome said, and wrote them in air with his smoking staff. 1. The Evil attack. The Good defend. 2. The Evil punish. The Good forgive. 3. The Evil hurt. The Good help. 4. The Evil take. The Good give. 5. The Evil hate. The Good love.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“Watching across the aisles, the Nevers' faces began to change. One by one, their scowls turned sorrowful, their eyes melted to hurt. Hort, Ravan, Anadil, even Hester...as if they too wished they could have such joy. As if they too wished they could feel as wanted. Gone was their will to fight, lost to broken hearts, and the villains shrank into silence, snakes drained of venom.”
― Soman Chainani, quote from The School for Good and Evil
“In March 1955, Powell called for a boycott of Harlem savings banks that "practice 'Jim Crow-ism' and 'economic lynching.'" He urged Abyssinian Baptist Church's fifteen thousand members to withdraw their funds from white-woned banks and transfer them to either the black-owned Carver Federal Savings in Harlem or the black-owned Tri-State Bank in Memphis, Tennessee (108).”
― Manning Marable, quote from Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
“It may be, in the end, that a good society is defined more by how people treat strangers than by how they treat those they know.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds
“The whole summer stretched out before us, long, hot, endless.
September flashed like a tiny red warning light in the distance, but if I squinted, I could ignore it. I decided to squint for a while.
'It's going to be wonderful,' I said.”
― Natalie Standiford, quote from How to Say Goodbye in Robot
“Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., quote from Letter from the Birmingham Jail
“His eyes were like black obsidian holes that threatened to suck everything in. Hypnotized, Atsuko couldn’t help being drawn down to his face. “Ah. You poor thing. You poor thing.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika
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