She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness-and life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same.

If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.

My job is to protect you, Lady Glinda even if you are loosing your mind.

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

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

... the decades looked on and didn't notice her passing. They stared from their fixed mounts across at each other and didn't see revolution striding between them, on her way to destiny.