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“When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can’t explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn’t happen very often. But I obey it.
Happiness at their concern was so strong in her that her panic fled,
The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.”
You don’t know how lucky you are to be loved.”
just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”
more. I guess I’ll just have to accept it without understanding it.”
Darkness has a tangible quality; it can be moved through and felt; in darkness you can bark your shins; the world of things still exists around you. She was lost in a horrifying void.
It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own.”
“Thee onnlly wway ttoo ccope withh ssometthingg ddeadly sseriouss iss ttoo ttry ttoo trreatt itt a llittlle lligghtly.”
Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”
These had a definite, rhythmic form, but they were not statues; they were like nothing Meg had ever seen before, and she wondered if they had been made by wind and weather, by the formation of this earth, or if they were a creation of beings like the one on which she rode.
Do you think we would have brought you here if there were no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it.
some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it’s a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it’s done so well.”
The complete, the true Mrs Whatsit, Meg realized, was beyond human understanding. What she saw was only the game Mrs Whatsit was playing;
It really helped ever so much because it made me mad, and when I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.”
“It’s my worst trouble, getting fond. If I didn’t get fond I could be happy all the time.
I give you your faults.”
the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns.
Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it.
“They’re skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone’s doing it at exactly the same moment.”
Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers.
they all gave the appearance of being the same.
“Oh, no! The children in our section never drop balls! They’re all perfectly trained. We haven’t had an Aberration for three years.”
“What are they afraid of?” Charles Wallace asked. “What’s the matter with them?”
The rhythm of the gesture never varied. The paper flew in identically the same arc at each doorway, landed in identically the same spot. It was impossible for anybody to throw with such consistent perfection.
“There was something funny about the way he talked, as though—well, as though he weren’t really doing the talking. Know what I mean?”
—Like the sameness of people riding in a subway, Meg thought.—Only on a subway every once in a while there’s somebody different and here there isn’t.
She wondered if Calvin realized that a lot of the arrogance was bravado.
There was IT again. What was this IT?
“Didn’t you ever have a father yourself?” Meg demanded. “You don’t want him for a reason. You want him because he’s your father.”
“The spoken word is one of the triumphs of man,” he proclaimed, “and I intend to continue using it, particularly with people I don’t trust.”
“Why don’t you trust me, Charles? Why don’t you trust me enough to come in and find out what I am? I am peace and utter rest. I am freedom from all responsibility. To come in to me is the last difficult decision you need ever make.”
“You might call IT the Boss.” Then Charles Wallace giggled, a giggle that was the most sinister sound Meg had ever heard. “IT sometimes calls ITself the Happiest Sadist.”
individuals have been done away with. Camazotz is ONE mind. It’s IT. And that’s why everybody’s so happy and efficient.
“I know our world isn’t perfect, Charles, but it’s better than this. This isn’t the only alternative! It can’t be!”
“Maybe if you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t know how to be happy.
This is Evil.”
She knew that if her father could not get her through the wall he would stay with her rather than leave her; she knew that she was safe as long as she was in his arms.
Her father had been found but he had not made everything all right. Instead everything was worse than ever, and her adored father was bearded and thin and white and not omnipotent after all. No matter what happened next, things could be no more terrible or frightening than they already were.
It was absolutely silent within the dome, and yet Meg realized that the only way to speak was to shout with all the power possible.
the red miasma began to creep before her eyes again, and she was afraid that she was going to lose consciousness, and if she did that she would be completely in the power of IT.
Disappointment was as dark and corrosive in her as the Black Thing.
Her father had not saved her; the beasts had.
