Ana

“You say you're looking for beauty, but this isn't the way to achieve it, my dear friend. You won't find it while you look to yourself, as if everything revolved around you. Don't you see? It's exactly the other way around, precisely the other way around. You mustn't be careful, you must get hurt. What I am trying to explain, child, is that unless you allow the beauty you seek to hurt you, to break you and knock you down, you'll never find it.”
― Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, The Awakening of Miss Prim

“It would not have occurred to the dwarfs to give the young queen anything they had dug themselves from beneath the earth. That would have been too easy, too routine. It's the distance that makes a gift magical, so the dwarfs believed.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Remember the white knight."

Though it seemed so long ago, he well remembered their conversation about the chess problem. The white knight had made a move, changed his mind, and started over.

"And do you believe this was a good move?" Mr. Benedict had asked.

"No, sir," Reynie had answered.

"Why, then, do you think he made it?"

And Reynie had replied, "Perhaps because he doubted himself.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Milligan now acted as if he were the happiest man alive - and perhaps he was. Having so long ago exited his life as a father, he had now, at long last, entered it again.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society