--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli
“I had raised Zel wrong. I had raised a creative, curious child. I had let the child develop her own inclinations. I had clapped with pleasure at every new discovery, new talent. I had raised a child who could love easily and whom anyone could love back. Oh, what a terrible twist. I had raised a child in the best way I knew how, and it was that mistake that kept her from me now. I hold that child in a tower. The only one I love, the one I love more than life itself; for two years I have held that one in a stone room. And I live alone. I live the life I would have lived if I had never had Zel in the first place. Only it is far worse—for I know what I have lost.”
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli
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“I still have no use for either; it seems to me that the combination of great beauty and great wealth is a monstrous cruel handicap for a girl who simply wants to tend to her own affairs and her own Geese. In the future I shall know precisely what to do if another old beggar woman comes pestering me for a bite to eat while I’m herding my Geese in the high meadow. Will I give her my last crust of bread, like the softhearted, simpleminded dunderpate that I am? No I will not; I’ll send her away with a flea in her ear, that’s what I’ll do. ‘Tis said that no good deed ever goes unpunished, and so I am learning to my sorrow.”
--Goose Girl by Patrice Kindl "But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?...Aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?"
--The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray |