Quotes by Shannon Hale

Seriously, a thirty-something woman shouldnt be daydreaming about a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world to the point where it interfered with her very real and much more important life and relationships. Of course she shouldnt.

Get back in my cot, girl, said Gilsa. Youre sickly.No, Im not, said Ani.Oh, no? Well, maybe stubbornness is a sickness, did you ever think of that?

Fortune-teller tea. Give it a sip!The liquid was pink and smelled of strawberries, but when Maddie drank it, the flavor was deep and a little bitter, followed by a sudden burst of sweetness.Her father returned. Well? he asked.It started out as black licorice and then melted into butterscotch, she said.Oh, my girl, the tea is telling you that this is the year to keep your ear to the ground and listen for surprises. Change is coming!Maddies stomach was full of thoughts and her head full of butterflies. She checked her watch again. She couldnt wait for it all to begin.

Even the jerks earn some of our affection. We can be glad theyre gone and yet still mourn the good parts.

No wolf falters before the bite, so strike.No hawk wavers before the dive, so swing.No sun pauses before the set, just strike.No rain delays before the fall, just swing.

Ashlynn washed her face, put on an apron, and then opened wide the door to her shoe closet. This princess wouldnt care if she wore a burlap sack every day, so long as she had dozens of footwear choices. Today she settled on a pair of scrappy teal wedges and went to start breakfast. Even though her fathers grand house came fully stocked with servants, her mother believed in good, solid, character-forming chores. After all, Ashlynn would inherit her mothers story and become the next Cinderella someday, and there would be lots of floors to mop and hearths to sweep her Happily Ever After.

You dont need luck. You are powerful, clever, and fearless.

Courage is feeling justly afraid and yet still doing what is right.

Courage is not fearlessness.

Jane Austen had created six heroines, each quite different, and that gave Charlotte courage. There wasnt just one kind of woman to be.

Do you know the feeling you get when you are awakened in the middle of a dream? The dream story is still real and full of color, but the waking world is rushing back into your mind. And for a moment both worlds are true, and you cannot quite tell them apart.

Miri took genuine comfort in studying Mathematics that day. She could sort numbers into two simple ideas: true and not true. Unlike numbers, words were rarely just one thing. They moved and changed, camouflaging and leaping out unexpectedly. Words were slippery and alive; words wrestled out of her grip and became something new. Words were dangerous.

That year, when the trees burned the fire of late summer into their leaves and the ground mist was a ghost of the river, long and wet and cold, the aunt looked from her windows to the walls around her and imagined another winter inside them. She began to see the world as a bird sees bars, and she scratched her arms beneath her sleeves.

...even if things were broken right now. Sometimes it was the cracks that let the light in.

Life feels like fall of itself.”“A dream within a dream.”“And I want to wake up.

Life feels like fall of itself.A dream within a dream.And I want to wake up.

Maybe I got a few words wrong, but thats so near how the conversation went, Im going to call it truth.

They werent nice words he said. He couldve lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.

I wish stories were kinder to their characters, Maddie said. But I guess trouble is more interesting to read about.

A cat can make you feel well rested when youre tired or turn a rage into a calm just by sitting on your lap. His very nearness is a healing song.