Noel > Noel's Quotes

“Unlike the Jester and the Clown, who are at the bottom of a hierarchical pile and survive only by making the king laugh, the Trickster is free, a paradox, a breaker of boundaries who makes us laugh—and laughter lets the sacred in. In Native spiritualities, there is often a belief that we cannot pray unless we’ve laughed.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“ah, life—
the thing
that happens
to us
while we’re off
somewhere else
blowing on
dandelions
& wishing
ourselves into
the pages of
our favorite
fairy tales.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One

“When he graduated he’d thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero’s journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn’t how it worked.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“The world was fucking awful. It was a wretched, desolate place, a desert of meaninglessness, a heartless wasteland, where horrific things happened all the time for no reason and nothing good lasted for long.

He'd been right about the world, but he was wrong about himself. The world was a desert, but he was a magician, and to be a magician was to be a secret spring - a moving oasis. He wasn't desolate, and he wasn't empty. He was full of emotion, full of feelings, bursting with them, and when it came down to it, that's what being a magician was.
They weren't ordinary feelings - they weren't the tame, domesticated kind. Magic was wild feelings, the kind that escaped out of you and into the world and changed things. There was a lot of skill to it, and a lot of learning, and a lot of work, but that was where the power began: the power to enchant the world.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“It was funny how just when you thought you knew yourself through and through, you stumbled on a new kind of strength, a fresh reserve of power inside you that you never knew you had, and all at once you found yourself burning a little brighter and hotter than you ever had before.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“For the ones who dream of stranger worlds.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“By the time I wrote this book I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath, from the point of view of the people who are not included. The ones who can’t do magic. The ones who don’t have shining staffs or swords. Women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless. Unheroes, ordinary people—my people. I didn’t want to change Earthsea, but I needed to see what Earthsea looked like to us.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu