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.

I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.”

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.

It will all be hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it’s the wonders I’m after, even if I have to bleed for them.

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.

is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in its changing and change with it.”

How wonderful is ritual, what a comfort in dark times!”