“Are you ready to go home, Catherine?” he asked. “It’s warm inside the house. I kept a fire going for you.”I continued looking at him, unsure how to respond. “Thanks,” I managed to say and then glanced in the direction of his house—our house. “Well, you are my wife. And I know you don’t like the cold.”I’m his wife, I thought to myself. He had said the words as if that simple fact made it necessary to be both thoughtful and kind. As if having gained a wife or husband meant having also gained her or his concerns, and hence the need to consider the person’s needs, wants, and preferences as strongly as one’s own. It struck me as a perfect description of what marriage ought to be. An agreeable notion that had not entered into my petty way of viewing matrimony. I would have assumed it to be above Thaddeus’ egotistical mindset as well.“Catherine?” he said again, watching me regard him with a quizzical expression. “Are you ready to go home?”I nodded, which made him smile.”

“Shepherds lift their heads,not to gaze at a new lightbut to hear angels.”

“There is no poetry without want. Desperate want.”

“Hallelujah songcarries on a gentle wind,heralding a king.”

“I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience.”

“For the real writers, every decision is either write or wrong.”

“I was breaking down, wanting to fade away and cry, yet I feared ever being invisible again. My head lowered to conceal my humiliation behind a curtain of hair where I trembled as if sobbing.“Hey, Gwen, it’s okay. It’s okay. Calm down.”I yearned to feel Daniel’s soft touch meet my temple and then trace along my ear, brushing back the hairs from my face. What I wanted was the comfort his caress always afforded me. He moved as if he would grant my wish, realizing at the last moment that neither of us possessed the power to touch the other.“Your hair, Gwen.”I refused to do what he wanted. I didn’t care for him to see the shame plainly visible in my features. But the next thing I knew, his blue eyes were staring up at me from the ground, a glare reflecting off his glasses. The guy had dropped his books to fall over for a clear view of my face. His desperation made me laugh.“It’s going to be okay, Gwen, I pro”

“Patience is seeing each step as a journey rather than seeing a journey as a thousand steps.”

“Oh, how terribly backwards, and yet sadly common, it is to sit scowling at family all the day long and then quickly put on a smile for strangers who drop by.”

“On Hallows Eve, we witches meetto broil and bubble tasty treatslike goblin thumbs with venom dip,crisp bat wings, and fried fingertips.We bake the loudest cackle crunch,and brew the thickest quagmire punch.Delicious are the rotting flieswhen sprinkled over spider pies.And, my oh my, the ogre brainsall scrambled up with wolf remains!But what I love the most, it’s true,are festered boils mixed in stew.They cook up oh so tenderly.It goes quite well with mugwort tea.So, don’t be shy; the cauldron’s hot.Jump in! We witches eat a lot!”

“I'm a sucker for curiosity's whims.Does that make me a cat person?”