Long Live the Pumpkin Queen Quotes

“Can the fool of a story also be the hero?”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“He kisses me again, folding me in his arms--the place I want to stay for a thousand years. When I first discovered Dream Town, I wasn't sure where I belonged, where my true home was. But now I know. Sometimes home is a town, a house with four walls. Other times, it's two hollow eyes in a skull, a skeleton without a heartbeat. It's here---not in Dream Town or Halloween Town---but in Jack's arms.
Folded against this hollow, skeleton chest is where I belong.
I let the tears stream down my face, I let them bind us together, salt and water and fabric and bone. Woven parts of ourselves that become one.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“I was born in Dream Town, but I am also the Pumpkin Queen.
I will fight for Jack. I will fight to set things right.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“The doorway smells of lavender, of freshly brewed chamomile tea, and my doll eyes flutter, suddenly heavy, like silver coins placed on the eyelids of the dead.
I feel the soft, dreamy tug of a gentle wind. Easy and quiet. Like bedding down in a knoll of moss, or sinking into a cellar, without sound.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“I am no longer your creation, I think, words knitted in my chest.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“Jack pulls me back into his arms, as if he could absorb the pain and take it from me. And I know, I would do it all over again: I would leave Dream Town and never return a thousand times just to be here with Jack, to touch his face, to feel his ice-cold lips on mine, to have a life with him in this town. To stand beside him as Pumpkin Queen.
This is the life I want. The one I'm willing to sacrifice everything for.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“I am Sally Skellington, the Pumpkin Queen." There is warmth in my chest now, heat and fury and anger. "But I was born in Dream Town." The words feel like their won conjuring, a spell, a ritual or bedtime riddle to cast things into the stars and make them true. I feel suddenly awake and alive, a woman who isn't simply a rag doll, but a ruler who has traveled to all the realms, even the human world, to set things right. Who feels a spark, a wrath growing inside her.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“I wonder if someday Jack and I will have our own pram filled with tiny skeletons and rag dolls. The scuttle of little feet through the house. Skeleton boys tumbling down the spiral stairs; little rag doll girls with their threads coming loose, always needing their fingers and toes stitched back together. A perfectly grim little family.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“At the crisp, inky hour of midnight, Jack and I are married atop Spiral Hill in the Death Door's Cemetery. Wind stirs the bone-dry leaves, and Jack takes my soft rag doll hands in his--the coolness of his fingers calming the flutter rippling across my stitched seams.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“In Halloween Town, it’s said that if you’re ever lost, you should follow your own shadow…it will always take you where you need to go.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“I only want you to be happy.” He says it softly, so only I can hear, then he kisses my palm, soft and sweet.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“I pass by cottages with candles glowing in windows, rocking chairs on front porches where people sit with large books on their laps drinking steaming cups of golden milk or tea that smells of chamomile and night jasmine. The entire place feels like a storybook, an old world frozen in time.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“I think how heavenly it must be to nibble on tiny cakes and swirled caramels and plum ginger puffs all day. Tea with lemon petit fours in the afternoon; after-dinner mint truffles with butterscotch coffee in the evening. My mind swims with the notion of it. The easy, sugar-induced lull that would follow me into candy-tinted dreams each night. Life here, in Valentine's Town, would surely be simple and uncomplicated.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“It feels like a fairy tale from one of those happily-ever-after books where the princess storms the castle, slays a goblin-dragon, and takes over the kingdom for herself. Except I am not golden-haired or fine-boned. I have no bones at all.
I am a rag doll who married a skeleton king.
A rag doll who woke from the impossible daydream and found herself in her own heroine story--a tale whose ending hasn't yet been written; but instead, is only just the beginning.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“There is an entire orchard. Hidden, tucked away. Rows and rows of magical, uncharted trees. Doorways into old, long forgotten towns.
Father Time.
Old Man Winter.
The Tooth Fairy.
Multitudes of worlds, places we never knew existed.
I smile, and Jack pulls me to him. A queen, and her king.
And I know, with a certainty that is knitted in my linen bones, we will spend a lifetime---Jack and I, side by side---slipping through doorways that lead to other doorways, carved into ancient, gnarled trees.
Lands to explore, adventures to be had.
But always together.
Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine. Fully. Unbound by the rules of others. Queen or not, we all deserve these things. Freedom. Hope. A chance to find out who we really are.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops.
In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless.
The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies.
And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“He wipes away the tear streaming down my cotton cheekbone to my chin and looks at me like his own chest is about to fracture. And for a moment, I'm certain they should just bury us both here, at the center of the graveyard. Married and died on the same day. Unable to contain the unspeakable, awful, wondrous emotion breaking against our eyelids.
The dreadful residents of Halloween Town applaud, tossing tiny dwarf spiders at our feet as we leave the cemetery, and the warmth in my chest feels like bats clamoring for a way out of my rib cage. Trying to break me apart.
I am now Sally Skellington.
The Pumpkin Queen.
And I'm certain I will never again be as happy as I am right now.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“Zeldaborn”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“But now I know. Sometimes home is a town, a house with four walls. Other times, it’s two hollow eyes in a skull, a skeleton without a heartbeat. It’s here—not in Dream Town or Halloween Town—but in Jack’s arms.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“Perhaps the crown has sat heavier on some heads than on others. Threatening to break them, or reshape them into something else. Something even mightier.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine. Fully. Unbound by the rules of others. Queen or not, we all deserve these things. Freedom. Hope. A chance to find out who we really are. Jack”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“Even if my seams can be broken, that doesn't mean I will be.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“It's a ghastly thing to lose an arm--or any part of yourself, really--to feel disconnected from your body. Not quite whole.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“Because right now I am simply a rag doll in a boat with a skeleton whom I love. Madly, Feverishly. Floating through a town where my title doesn't matter. Queen, queen, queen. Where no one knows who I am.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“My mind hisses with overcrowded thoughts, like poison bubbling over-left to simmer too long on a cackling fire.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“And I wonder: do other queens and princesses and duchesses feel as I do? In other realms, in other times? Have they peered at their reflections in ponds and warm bathwater and magic mirrors and wondered who they've become? How they lost the girl they once were?”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“A graveyard.
It's the largest cemetery I've ever seen--a place Jack would surely love.
A long rectangle of green lawn lined with rows and rows of old, moss-coated and weather-worn gravestones. Rain pounds the earth, and the cold tickle of air against my neck reminds me of the cemetery in Halloween Town. A feeling that exists in every cemetery, it seems. That hint of death. Of sorrow. Of lives brought to an end. But I don't have to go far before I find a small stone structure, an ornate mausoleum with spires along the roofline and a copper door, tarnished green from the rain. A tomb where the dead are placed to rest.
I glance up the path, the cemetery glistening in the wet air. I have passed through many realms, all the way into the human world to a city made strangely silent, and now this mausoleum is my way home.
My way back to Jack.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“Maybe, maybe, I can be both, too. A rag doll and a Pumpkin Queen. In control of her own life, her own royal title. A queen who doesn't allow the sovereignty to overshadow the rag doll she's always been.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen

“You're the only rag dolls I've seen in Dream Town," I comment, seeing myself reflected back in the features of their faces--something I've never known until now.
The seams of Albert's mouth lift into a half smile. "There are a few others. Rag dolls like us, and also several Teddy Bears and Floppy-Eared Rabbits. They are all sleep-weavers, but they spend most of their time in the human world, helping lull children to sleep.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen