Shannon Hale citations

Page 4

“Her smile was peculiar - it made her nose wrinkle, not as though she smelled something unpleasant, but more that she was so amused, her whole face wanted to be a part of the smile.”

“No small thing, a bee's sting
When it enters the heart
Not so benign, the growing vine
When it tears stone apart”

“No wolf falters before the bite
So strike
No hawk wavers before the dive
Just strike”

“The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn, the turning of the page between night and day.”

“I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.”

“The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.”

“Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.”

“No one had ever called her wild before. She wanted to be wild now, for him. Wild seemed more enticing then a bowl of berries.”

“It was karma, it was kismet, it was magic. It doesn't matter how it happened, just that it did.”

“I need to admit up front that I don't know how to have a fling. I'm not good at playing around and then saying good-bye. I'm throwing myself at your feet because I'm hoping for a shot at forever." Henry Jenkins/Mr. Nobley”

“No matter that we could be beheaded for this,” said Esa. “Heads are overrated.”
“Yes, they are so unfashionable,” said Miri, imitating an Aslandian accent. “This spring, ladies of style are wearing their feathers in their necks.”

“Miss Erstwhile: “It is such a relief, Mr. Nobley, to already know that you find this exercise vulgar and your partner unworthy. It saves us the idle chitchat.”
Mr. Nobley: “And yet you chat away.”

“He looked at her, and the clarity of his dark eyes struck her heart with a sensation of a wound touched.”

“There's nothing more aggravating in the world than the midnight sniffling of the person you've decided to hate.”

“…'Goose girl, may I kiss you?' She answered by… kissing him first.”

“A heart's a heart, in a child or a man. You are tougher than you feel right now. Your roots are deep, your canopy's spread wide. You're going to show everyone what it means to be a king.”

“Listen to your second thought, or the third might be too late.”

“Don't beat yourself up," said Charlotte. "True love can be so easily mistaken for other things-friendship, humane concern, indigestion…”