And there the wicked witch stayed for a long long time.' Did she ever come out?' Not yet.

She wasn't afraid of doing good or of resisting evil. She was merely afraid she might not be able to tell the difference.

...What is the use of beauty? i have lived my life surrounded by painters, and still I do not know the answer. But i suspect, some days, that beauty helps protect the spirit of mankind, swaddle it and succor it, so that we might survive. Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes or lives less miserable so that we might be more kind-well, then, lets have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories.

It's been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.

Oh now that's a blueprint for an impossibly rosy future