“Her mind had been a blank story for so many years, and, suddenly, all the pages were filled with lost memories.”

“She said nothing for a moment, unsure what exactly to say. She loved him with every breath she took. She would do anything for him. How could she word her affections? Moisture assembled in her eyes, and, to her surprise, a tear trickled down her cheek. There were many things she’d like to say, but she didn’t know how.”

“It was more than that, he said, looking down briefly at her. Love fades when you die. I am clearly dead, but my love for her hasn't diminished. It still burns inside me like a flicker in a flame.”

“Angelica didn’t care if she was forbidden from doing something because she relished in the challenge of finding the answer. She needed to know everything because a lack of knowledge terrified her. Angelica was forever afraid of things she didn’t know or didn’t understand. Thus, she opened the attic door…”

“People could leave her; they could die. Something you loved so much could be taken away from you in seconds. Therefore, she decided to let no one else in. No one could hurt her that way.”

“Angelica was thankful for the silence, however. Sometimes silence was the best comfort.”

“This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest counties . . . I had read at least twenty of the [fairy tales] when I noticed something that had never struck me before--I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been of chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears! It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the very next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write . . . the day was warm and windless and without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story.”