Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversations was flow.

A man is called a traitor, or liberator. A rich man is a thief or philanthropist. Is one a crusader or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist.

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all.

And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.

The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on.

Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense