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The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

Catherynne M. Valente

Top 10 Best Quotes

“English loves to stay out all night dancing with other languages, all decked out in sparkling prepositions and irregular verbs. It is unruly and will not obey—just when you think you have it in hand, it lets down its hair along with a hundred nonsensical exceptions.”

“Oh, September. My best girl. I shall tell you an awful, wonderful, unhappy, joyful secret: It is like that for everyone. One day you wake up and you are grown. And on the inside, you are no older than the last time you thought Wouldn't it be lovely to be all Grown-Up right this second?”

“It is not so easy to always remember who you are.”

“Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist.”

“Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.”

“Tamburlaine's house seemed more a place where books kept their people than where people kept their books.”

“A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.”

“Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls or a Scarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs.”

“She's an old woman possessed of great powers--but aren't all old women possessed of great powers? Occupational hazard, I think.”

“Rules are for those who can't think of a better way.”

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Book Keywords:

time, fairyland, stories, think, growing-up, rules, books, maps

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