Marie Rutkoski

“Fairy tales are rife with transformation — from beast to handsome prince, from dirty scullery maid to well-dressed princess. It is perhaps no coincidence that nature in the Cinderella stories facilitates transformation, for nature itself is a changeable thing, from season to season, from a sunny day to rain, from an egg to a flying bird in a matter of weeks.(Source: "The Nature of Cinderella".)”

“Some days are just born bad. You know the type. The kind you want to sweep into your palm like spilled salt and toss over your left shoulder, hoping that if you don't look back nothing worse will happen.”

“Oranges were the prince's favorite fruit. He always peeled tem himself, and took some pleasure in tearing the bright skin away to expose the soft wedges within. He liked the spray of tiny citrus beads, he liked the tangy taste, and above all he liked that an orange is a fruit to be eaten piece by piece.”

“It's easier to break something than create it.”

“If you would like to know how easy it is to overlook evil, Petra could tell you: it is the easiest thing in the world.”

“Just because you don't know something doesn't mean it's not true.”

“Truth was like an exploding star: violent, glitteringly beautiful. Now that I had seen it, felt it, it was impossible to settle for anything less.”

“When you're a stranger to people you care about, you become a stranger to yourself.”

“There can be second chances. But maybe it's also true that things can never be the same, and that you have to decide whether the second chance lives up to the first.”

“Isn't that... isn't that what friends do? They change our perspective on the world. Part of why we care about them is because we love that feeling. The feeling of being changed.”

“How can you interpret the behavior of others when you're a mystery to yourself?”

“I have three younger siblings, and used to tell them an awful lot of lies when they were growing up. The best thing about being a writer is that now I can say that my lies were all in the name of literary creativity. Unfortunately, my brothers and sister don’t believe me.”