More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
‘People don’t listen anyway,’ said Tiffany.
All the monsters are coming back.’ ‘Why?’ ‘There’s no one to stop them.’ There was silence for a moment. ‘There’s me,’ said Tiffany.
Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They’ve got a mean streak.’
‘After all, it can’t be very hard to mess with a toad’s head, yeah? It must be much simpler that turning, oh, a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound human into eight ounces of toad, yes? After all, where’s the rest of the mass going to go, I ask myself?
‘Ach, see you, pussycat, scunner that y’are!’ he yelled. ‘Here’s a giftie from the t’ wee burdies, yah schemie!’
That’s the trouble with a brain: it thinks more than you sometimes want it to.
It was the kind of search where you go and look in the attic, even though the door is always locked.
you can’t love people all the time when they have a permanently runny nose.
Don’t wish, Miss Tick had said. Do things.
If you get Nac Mac Feegles in the house, it’s usually best to move away.’
‘It dissolves spoons,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s for special occasions. Father says it’s not for women because it puts hairs on your chest.’
Few things are hidden from a quiet child with good eyesight,
‘Stealin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ fightin’!’
‘Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna’ be fooled again!’
dreeing your weird means “facing your fate”,’
‘Aye, she’s the hag, sure enough. That’s a hag’s question!’
‘They think names have magic in them,’ he murmured. ‘They don’t tell them to people in case they are written down.’
‘They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.’
‘Ye speak for your master, your master speaks for his dog. Who speaks for the hills?
A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law.
On the Chalk, a thumb bargain was unbreakable.
the Baron had been shown what happens when sheep rise up,
No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done
I think I can be clueless in more sensible ways.
‘One Feegle can lift a grown man. You couldn’t squash one if you tried.’
But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.’
Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there’s room?
what people mean to do and what is done are two different things,’
‘Ye’ve got that little bitty bit inside o’ you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o’ ye.
First Sight is when you can see what’s really there, not what your heid tells you ought to be there.
Second sight is dull sight, it’s seeing only what you expect to see.
‘But what he needs is love an’ care an’ teachin’ an’ people sayin’ “no” to him sometimes an’ things o’ that nature.
D’ye ken how to be weak? Can ye bow to the gale, can ye bend to the storm?’
‘I recall Sarah Aching talkin’ aboot ye,’ said the kelda. ‘She said ye were a strange wee one, always watchin’ and listenin’. She said ye had a heid full o’ words that ye ne’er spoke aloud. She wondered what’d become o’ ye. Time for ye to find out, aye?’
the kind of calm voice that said a stormy voice could follow if people didn’t do what they were told.
She used words as if they cost money.
Tiffany lived on a farm. Any little beliefs that babies are delivered by storks or found under bushes tend to get sorted out early on if you live on a farm,
It’s amazing what a child who is quiet and observant can learn, and this includes things people don’t think she is old enough to know.
‘At the end of the world is a great big mountain of granite rock a mile high,’ she said. ‘And every year, a tiny bird flies all the way to the rock and wipes its beak on it. Well, when the little bird has worn the mountain down to the size of a grain of sand … that’s the day I’ll marry you, Rob Anybody Feegle!’
The period of time it takes a pictsie to go from normal to mad fighting mood is so tiny it can’t be measured on the smallest clock.
Recommended treatment is daily dosing with turpentine until there is no longer either any trembling, or turpentine, or sheep.’
then she threw us oout on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stealin’ and fightin’ al’ the time,’
‘Ye used yer eyes and used yer heid. That’s what a real hag does. The magicking is just there for advertisin’.’
The Nac Mac Feegle would fight and steal, certainly, but who wanted to fight the weak and steal from the poor?
You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big, simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page.
The Quin’ll try to be kind to him, but she disnae know how. She’s an elf. They’re no’ very good at thinking of other people.’
He’s mine. My place, my home, my brother! How dare anything touch what’s mine!
She wasn’t being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it.
She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would probably be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable.
Better to feed your beast than whip it. You hear me?’
