If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. I believe I am loveable. How can something as fragile as a word build a whole world?

I explained we lost the porch to the flood. Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, its good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.

It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.

But witchy magic doesn’t listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn’t really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.

I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I’m joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I’m glad I’m the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.

That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

Our English monarchs are so unimaginative,” said Eldric. “They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.