Let’s hope she’s like the others, who look only at the surface. Let’s hope she’d never think that a girl with black-velvet eyes and cut-glass cheekbones could be a witch.

He scooped up my arm, swung me round. “Let go, Cecil,” I said. “I’ve a strange dislike of being forced.” “But Briony,” he said, “I’m so full of good spirits. I could walk to London, I think!” Why didn’t he?

Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots.

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

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

Even a witch wants sympathy.