A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

Grown-ups don’t usually apologize to kids, not about big stuff like that.

Minds are not our friends.

It should never have come down to me. It was miserably unfair that it had come to me and Spindle. There were grown-ups who should have stopped it.

I don’t know if when you’re an adult, you can argue and be right, but if you’re a kid and you argue with an adult, you’re automatically wrong.

It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.”

You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”

“You didn’t fail,” I said. “They wouldn’t let you succeed. It’s different.”

“My dear, I am certain that you can go on about how unworthy and incapable you are for hours yet, but we have very little time. Let us pretend that we have done all that and that I have nodded correctly and made the proper noises, and skip to the point where you say, “I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try.”

I was so angry I was crying.

Death by sourdough starter. Not a good way to go.