The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)

by Catherynne M. Valente

We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly.

But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it is brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.

September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.

“When you are born,” the golem said softly, “your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like.

though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.