I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose. I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.

It’s the place of the story, beginning here, in the meadow of late summer flowers, thriving before the Atlantic storms drive wet and winter upon them all.

But she woke up just then, and in the moonlight covered herself with a blanket. She smiled at him drowsily and called him "Yero, my hero," and that melted his heart.

She dreamed of leaving, but she had too little exposure to the world to imagine where to go.

The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief.

I had written childrens books for 14 years before I published Wicked. And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed.

He had thought love as a policy made a lot of sense for those who could manage it, and anyone who could manage it belonged in religious life. The rest of us have to struggle with more ordinary love, the common or garden variety: love as a crippling condition. Love as a syndrome.