The Square of Sevens

People like to say they seek the truth. Sometimes they even mean it. The truth is they crave the soft, quilted comfort of a lie. Tell them they’re going to be rich or fall in love, and they walk away whistling. Give them the hard, unvarnished truth, and you’re looking at trouble.

If time with those we love is measured by the hourglass, then God’s greatest cruelty is not to let us see the size of that vessel.

If you wanted a saint, then you should have read a different book.

When a man is powerful and evil, other people surround themselves with lies, until they’re not sure if they’re protecting him or protecting themselves.

Some roles we choose to play

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water. —MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, DON QUIXOTE

as his father made gammon look wise.

The common folk call it magic.

Faced with their fortune, people open up like books, and if you understand the language of souls, then you can read them.

True witches are rare in the modern age,” Father said. “More often than not, the finger of suspicion is pointed at women who have committed no crime greater than growing old without a husband.

The trouble with being a child was people expected you to act like a child.

Too much sanity may be madness—and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be.” Perhaps that is what Red is

The dead live on in our memories,’ she’d said to me once. ‘Sometimes they clamour so loudly their voices drown out the living.

Men were nothing but a world of trouble, with their threats and their desires and their greed.

Imagine a world,’ Trevithick said, ‘in which your clothes are sewn by an automaton tailor, your boots made by a clockwork cobbler, your wig by a peruke-making machine. Imagine your wealth tallied by a machine abacus, your carriage driven by a clockwork coachman, your verses written by an automaton poet.

Understand their fears and uncertainties, their limits and possibilities, and you understand their soul.

Some roles we choose to play, others are chosen for us. Sometimes those roles become indistinct from our true selves.

My father had spelt it out to me. Choice was a luxury I couldn't afford. This is your story, Red. You must tell it well.