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“Because it’s a hard thing to leave a place where you’ve lived most of your life, where your brothers and sisters and parents still live, where some of your children will stay behind,” Mama said. “It’s a hard thing to risk what you know and are sure of, just for the possibility of something better. Even when it’s a pretty strong possibility, and something that’s a whole lot better.”
“They’ve been saying you have a good-sized family.” “Any size that’s wanted is good,” Mama said, and then told her our names.
My favorite big family quote
didn’t really want to explain in so many words what I’d been thinking.
couldn’t unhear what I’d heard, but I could pretend I hadn’t heard it.
“You’re special, too,” William said fiercely. “You’re just quiet about it.”
“Brant’s an idealist, and he’s competent. There are few more dangerous combinations in this world.”
“Heroes are even more dangerous than idealists,”
considerations. Life can be bitterly hard for someone who mistakes her choice.”
It seemed to me that all mothers worried a fair piece about their children getting a good start in life, and the more children they had, the more they worried about every last one of them.
“I may agree with your sentiments, but I very much disapprove of your way of expressing them,”
Nobody quite dared to scold Lan, no matter how annoyed they were with him.
“I am not putting off my wedding just because my brat of a younger sister, whom I haven’t seen in eight years, has behaved like a selfish little tramp.”
I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of, and I’m not changing a single thing that I don’t absolutely have to change.”
Because this time I didn’t see the frightening oldest uncle who’d tried to have me arrested when I was five. I saw a selfish, pompous, ignorant old man, who didn’t even think about how he was ruining Diane’s wedding worse than ever Rennie had.
Well, if he was going to blame me anyway, I decided that I was going to give him something to blame me for.
And then along with the anger, something else woke inside me, something that was already just as strong as the anger that had been building up for all my life. Magic.
Once when a spell went wrong, it punched a hole the shape of a duck in every pane of glass in every west-facing window in every building for three blocks around the magic lab,
The boys were a bit miffed, at first, and Mr. Harrison scowled ferociously, but Papa and Professor Jeffries just waved cheerfully.
What works, works, but there’s not much rhyme or reason back of it that I’ve ever seen.”
decided right then that no matter what Mama said about being a lady, I wasn’t ever getting stuck sitting in a wagon again if all the interesting people were going to be riding.
If I was that sure that Wash would think my idea was a bad one, I figured I should think about it a lot more before I actually did anything.
like she was cross that the word even existed for her to have to say. “Magicians,
“There are always people in any group who will go along with authority only so long as authority agrees with their opinions,” Papa
Rennie didn’t look grown-up older; she looked worn-out older.
was young and scared, and I did the best I could at the time.” She hesitated, then sighed and went on. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
I could hang on to what was left of the hurt, or I could decide to let it go and move on.
You could just see the moment when Mr. Harrison realized that if Lan was a double-seventh son, Papa had to be a seventh son. I don’t think that it had occurred to him before.
