Mary

“One of you needs food,' said the Old Woman, 'and three of you need healing.'
So the Princess sat down to good soup, and fresh bread, and fruit tart with clotted cream and a mug of sharp cider, and the Old Woman put the creatures on the table, and healed them in her way. Her way was to make them tell the story of their hurts, and as they told, she applied ointments and drops with tiny feathery brushes and little bone pins ...”
― A.S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories

“And she was angry because she knew she was capable of many things she couldn't even define to herself, so they seemed like bad dreams - that is what she told me. She told me she was eaten up with unused power and thought she might be a witch - except, she said, if she were a man, these things she thought about would be ordinarily acceptable.”
― A.S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories

“All English stories get bogged down in whether or not the furniture is socially and aesthetically acceptable.”
― A.S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories