Oh confound that gray-and-scarlet suit!" Sophie said. "I refuse to believe that I was the one that got caught with it!

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.' When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

It does not seem to me that I have the right to foist a story on people, most of whom are children who should be learning all the time, unless I am learning from it too.

Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people's lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day.

Things are going round and round in my head--or maybe my head is going round and round in things.

It's just as I thought," she said. "I prefer you to every single one of these. Some of these look far too proud of themselves, and some look selfish and cruel. You are unassuming and kind. I intend to ask my father to marry me to you, instead of to the Prince in Ochinstan. Would you mind?