The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (Fairyland, #4)

by Catherynne M. Valente

One cannot really be bothered by insults from strangers. Might as well cry over the tide coming

One can only know the weight and heft of the prices one pays oneself. The costs borne by others are their own, secret and deep and long.

Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist. Just because most of the maps show Europe in the middle does not make it so. A Capital in one map may be a distant, unknown, misty village in another. A terrible wasteland in one map may be a cozy home in another. It all depends on who is drawing the map, and where they begin.

English loves to stay out all night dancing with other languages, all decked out in sparkling prepositions and irregular verbs. It is unruly

and will not obey—just when you think you have it in hand, it lets down its hair along with a hundred nonsensical exceptions.

Changelings are all Heart. Their Hearts are so big that there is no room for anything else. They wear their hearts on the outside, like you and I wear our skin. And so all the bravery and headstrong feeling and sweetness and fierceness and wildness and terror and love has nothing to stand between it and the world.

Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls or a Scarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs. Some walk around naked, though no one can see it but you and I. Thomas

Only once Summer comes round again, with its bindle full of adventures and bendings of rules and unwatched, unfettered, unending days in the sun does time return to its favorite pace, slow and golden and warm. But with the seasons, Summer disappears, off on its own wanderings and exploits and love affairs with the Equinoxes.

It was not the house of someone who liked books. It did not have a well-stocked library. It was not even stuffed with books. Thomas could not see any part of the house that was not mostly book. Books rose from the floor to the ceiling in unruly, tottering towers.

“My mother is a gardener and my father is a librarian. That’s nice, don’t you think? She minds trees while they’re young and he minds them when they’re old. There’s a logic to the two

“South Avalon, by the looks. Well, at least you have terrible taste in counties. The geographical equivalent of a pub with its windows shot out, ferrets on the card tables, and a lady at the bar insisting that a cup of dirt is whiskey.”

“Sounds like my kind of girl,” Blunderbuss piped up. “Systems are for punching

and biting and sitting on till they cry double uncle with ice cream on top.” Charlie Crunchcrab stared at the

Kings, she had always thought, were like thunderstorms. They came and went with a lot of fuss but there wasn’t much difference between one and another. And every once in a while they tore your roof off and electrocuted your cat. “It’s all right,”

All Wombats Are Created Equal, Except for Gregory. No Wombat Shall Be Enslaved, Left Behind, Abandoned, or Unloved. Not Even Gregory. Kangaroos Must Pay a Five-Percent Tax on All Goods and Services on Account of Being Kangaroos.

“Everybody’s strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you’re not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth

(Only beware, the butterflies are quite vicious, being an ancient nation of warriors without mercy.)

She’s an old woman possessed of great powers—but aren’t all old women possessed of great powers? Occupational hazard, I think.

We fed it with all the things hotel rooms like to eat: tears and jumping on the bed and mints and empty room service trays and secret meetings and ugly mismatched furniture and individually wrapped soap and too many guests crammed in at once. So we’re really in the Hotel, but not inside

If he’d hardly ever had a haircut and had worked so hard he had muscles

before he had a beard. If he’d spent half his life with his head bent and his jaw clenched.

A smile she’d been making since a day long ago, the day she saw a leopard for the first time. Tamburlaine loved that smile. She wanted to learn to make one of her own.