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To my mother and grandmothers and all the women they burned before us
Mama Mags said that was horseshit, and that wickedness was like beauty: in the eye of the beholder. She said proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way.
That temper will get you burnt at the damn stake, Mama Mags used to tell her. A wise woman keeps her burning on the inside.
She’s asking: Aren’t you tired yet? Of being cast down and cast aside? Of making do with crumbs when once we wore crowns? She’s asking: Aren’t you angry yet?
Every woman draws a circle around herself. Sometimes she has to be the only thing inside it.
She told the king and queen that, since they failed to invite her to their feast, she brought a curse instead of a blessing: one day a young maiden would prick her finger on a spindle and the castle would fall into an endless sleep from which no one could wake it.
Sleeping Beauty fairytale
Sister, sister, Look around, Something’s lost And must be found!
St. Anthony's prayer
Unless there are words and ways waiting among the children’s verses; power passed in secret from mother to daughter, like swords disguised as sewing needles.
oral traditions were common long before written...
Bella informs her that this is the precise reason why women’s dresses no longer have pockets, to show they bear no witch-ways or ill intentions, and Juniper responds that she has both, thank you very damn much.
so many ways women have been repressed throughout history!
I like Juniper's sass
The rules aren’t written down anywhere, but the important rules rarely are.
Sometimes a thing is too dangerous to be written down or said straight out. Sometimes you have to slip it in slantwise, half-hidden.”
You can tell the wickedness of a witch by the wickedness of her ways.
But all the caring was beaten and burned out of her, and now she’s just hate with a heartbeat. May sticks and stones break your bones.
forced into the way she is because of how women were treated as property, lesser citizens, with fewer rights, and this is her only defense
“Surely trust is never truly broken, but merely lost.” Beatrice’s lips twist. “And what is lost, that can’t be found?”
But she should have known no man ever loved a woman’s strength—they only love the place where it runs out. They love a strong will finally broken, a straight spine bent.
this is why I'm still single and refuse to settle, a REAL man loves his woman's strength, supports her, and is a safe space for her when she needs it.
The problem with saving someone, Bella thinks, is that they so often refuse to remain saved. They careen back out into the perilous world, inviting every danger and calamity, quite careless of the labor it took to rescue them in the first place.
She thought survival was a selfish thing, a circle drawn tight around your heart. She thought the more people you let inside that circle the more ways the world had to hurt you, the more ways you could fail them and be failed in turn. But what if it’s the opposite, and there are more people to catch you when you fall? What if there’s an invisible tipping point somewhere along the way when one becomes three becomes infinite, when there are so many of you inside that circle that you become hydra-headed, invincible?
That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.”
“Writing a book is dangerous business, if done correctly.”
She begins to believe that the words and ways are whichever ones a woman has, and that a witch is merely a woman who needs more than she has.
