Mal’s Reviews > The Darkest Part of the Forest > Status Update

“We are all capable of great self-deception when it serves us”

““It was enough to make her want to sit down on the ground and start to cry. It was too much. But there was no one else, so it couldn’t be too much. It had to be exactly enough. It had to be what she could handle, and she had to handle it.”

“The hardest thing about being wanted was the hardest thing about wanting—wanting badly enough that it gave you a stomachache, wanting in the way that was partly about kissing and partly about swallowing whole, the way a snake gulps down a mouse or the Big Bad Wolf gulps down Red Riding Hood—wanting turned someone you felt like you knew into a stranger. they became terrifying and you became terrified”

“You don’t have to believe you can, she told herself. Just do it.”

“she remembered things that hurt more easily than anything nice”

“as though the universe was conspiring to give her everything she’d ever wanted and punishing her at the same time”

“Every child needs a tragedy to become truly interesting”

“She felt outside of it all, purposeless and adrift. Once, she’d had a quest, one she’d been willing to give up everything for, but it turned out that some quests couldn’t be won just by giving things up.”