“Sometimes, when one communicates with others, one produces results.”

“But usually, I watched Linda read. I couldn't believe she'd read so much in summer! Sometimes she laughed, reading her book, and one time she even cried. I didn't know how anyone could make such a big deal about books.”

“A memory came to me. One time, in middle school, a famous author came to talk to our class and give a writing workshop. One of the things she told us about writing a novel was that the story should be about what the main character wants. Dorothy wants to go home to Kansas. George Milton wants a farm of his own. Amelia Sedley wants to marry her darling George and live happily ever after. The end of the story, according to the famous author, is when the character either gests what he wants or realizes he’s never going to get it. Or sometimes, she said, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, realizes she doesn’t actually want what she thought she wanted all along. pg. 324 of Bewitching”

“Maybe Cinderella was the bad guy in the story, and her stepsisters were just nerdy girls who wanted a boyfriend. How politically correct was it, really, to make the villains ugly? And how realistic? In my experience, it was usually the pretty people who were mean to the ugly ones, not the other way.”

“A shoe that fits one person pinches another.”

“But sometimes it is just impossible to obey blindly. Sometimes a child must strike out on her own. A child cannot be a child forever”

“Sometimes, unexpected things can happen.”