Beneath The Sugar Sky Quotes

There is kindness in the world, if we know how to look for it. If we never start denying it the door.

That's why people shouldn't get too hung up on labels. Sometimes I think that's part of what we do wrong. We try to make things make sense, even when they're never going to.

Sometimes that’s all you can do. Just keep getting through until you don’t have to do it anymore, however much time that takes, however difficult it is.

For others, the lure of a world where they fit is too great to escape, and they will spend the rest of their lives rattling at windows and peering at locks, trying to find the way home.

Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew.

Nobody promised me a happy ending. They didn’t even promise me a happy existence.

We’re all puzzle boxes, skeleton and skin, soul and shadow.

Grave robbing was still viewed as socially inappropriate, and doing it when the sun was up was generally viewed as unwise.

Adults can still tumble down rabbit holes and into enchanted wardrobes, but it happens less and less with every year they live. Maybe this is a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious.

Everything did, if left long enough to its own devices. Futures, pasts, it didn’t matter. Everything fell apart.

The rules of the school are simple. Heal. Hope. And if you can, find your way back where you belong. No Solicitation. No visitors. No quests.

We’re teenagers in a magical land following a dead girl and a disappearing girl into a field of organic, pesticide-free candy corn,” said Kade. “I think weird is a totally reasonable response to the situation. We’re whistling through the graveyard to keep ourselves from totally losing our shit.

Every world gets to make its own rules. Sometimes those rules are going to be impossible. That doesn't make them any less enforceable.

Children have always tumbled down rabbit holes, fallen through mirrors, been swept away by unseasonal floods or carried off by tornadoes. Children have always traveled, and because they are young and bright and full of contradictions, they haven’t always restricted their travel to the possible. Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew. Adults can still tumble down rabbit holes and into enchanted wardrobes, but it happens less and less with every year they live. Maybe this is a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious. Childhood melts, and flights of fancy are replaced by rules. Tornados kill people: they don’t carry them off to magical worlds. Talking foxes are a sign of fever, not guides sent to start some grand adventure. But children, ah, children. Children follow the foxes, and open the wardrobes, and peek beneath the bridge. Children climb the walls and fall down the wells and run the razor’s edge of possibility until sometimes, just sometimes, the possible surrenders and shows them the way to go home.

You were a mermaid, weren't you? That's what Nadya said." "I still am," said Cora. "I just have my scales under my skin for now.

Breathe. It's going to be okay." Cora took a deep breath, eyeing him. "You really think so?" "No," he said baldly. "It's never okay. But I told myself that every night when I was in Prism. I told myself that every morning when I woke up, still in Prism. And I got through, Sometimes that's all you can do. Just keep getting through until you don't have to do it anymore, however much time that takes, however difficult it is.

Sugar, flour, and cinnamon won't make a house a home, So bake your walls of gingerbread and sweeten them with bone. Eggs and milk and whipping cream, butter in the churn, Bake our queen a castle in the hopes that she'll return.

He liked the excuse to talk to people about their shared differences, which became their shared similarities when held up to the right light. They had all survived something. The fact that they had survived different somethings didn't change the fact that they would always be, in certain ways, the same.

That makes no sense at all. That means it may well work. Go, my darlings, and bring your lost and shattered sister home.

There's always more than one way to find something out. People only say there's only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it. There are lots of ways to find out, and some of them even involve not pissing off a man who goes by 'the Lord of the Dead.

WHAT WE BURY IS NOT LOST, ONLY SET ASIDE

Elsewhere was a legend and a lie, until it came looking for you.

I like existing. I'm not ready to unexist just because of stupid causality. I didn't invite stupid causality to my birthday party, so it doesn't get to give me any presents.

Frosting isn’t a good medium for lengthy dissertations on fate.

They can be hard for their families to understand, those returned, used-up miracle children. They sound like liars to people who never had a doorway of their own. They sound like dreamers. They sound... unwell, to the charitable, and simply sick to the cruel.

Magical thinking might seem like nonsense to some people, but he had danced with skeletons by the light of a marigold moon, he had kissed the glimmering skull of a girl with no lips and loved her as he had never loved anything or anyone in his life, and he thought he’d earned a certain amount of nonsense, as long as it helped him get by.

Everyone who wound up at Eleanor West's School - everyone who found a doorway - understood what it was to spend a lifetime waiting for something that other people wouldn't necessarily understand. Not because they were better than other people and not because they were worse, but because they had a need trapped somewhere in their bones, gnawing constantly, trying to get out.

Nadya, who had spotted the three of them, was waving her arms frantically over her head, signaling her distress. In case this wasn’t enough, she shouted, “Over here! Next to the naked lady!” “A cake’s a cake, whether or not it’s been frosted,” said the stranger primly. “You are not a cake, you are a human being, and I can see your vagina,” snapped Nadya. The stranger shrugged. “It’s a nice one. I’m not ashamed of it.

Layla sighed and leaned over to put her hand on Rini's shoulder. "Breathe," she said. "I think one of my lungs has stopped existing." said Rini.

It was like they had all learned to be a little kinder, or at least a little more careful about what they based their judgements on.

There’s always more than one way to find something out. People only say there’s only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it.

You were a mermaid, weren’t you? That’s what Nadya said.” “I still am,” said Cora. “I just have my scales under my skin for now.” Christopher smiled, a little lopsided. “Funny. That’s where I keep my bones.

I'm just a candy corn farmer. My only part in this play was loving your mother and raising you, and I did both of them as well as I could, but that didn't make me worldly, and it didn't make me wise. It made me a man with a hero for a wife and a daughter who was going to do something great someday, and that was all I wanted to be. I never saved the day. I never challenged the gods. I was the person you could come home to when the quest was over, and I'd greet you with a warm fudge pie and a how was your day, and I'd never feel like I was being left out just because I was forever left behind.

Children, ah, children. Children follow the foxes, and open the wardrobes, and peek beneath the bridge. Children climb the walls and fall down the wells and run the razor’s edge of possibility until sometimes, just sometimes, the possible surrenders and shows them the way to go home.

You are not a cake, you are a human being, and I can see your vagina,' snapped Nadya. The stranger shrugged. 'It's a nice one. I'm not ashamed of it.

It makes no sense, so it makes more nonsense.

She didn't seem to understand that this was strange, that when the rest of them looked at the junkyard, they saw only failures, not the building blocks of new successes. This wasn't their place. There was no question that it was hers.

Sometimes you say 'nonsense' like it's an idea and sometimes you say it like it's a proper name," said the Baker. "Why is that?

A cake’s a cake, whether or not it’s been frosted,” said the stranger primly. “You are not a cake, you are a human being, and I can see your vagina,” snapped Nadya. The stranger shrugged. “It’s a nice one. I’m not ashamed of it.

So please, can we go and tell her to stop? I need to exist. It’s important.

I’m not stupid, I just don’t know stuff,” said Rini.

He sounded less sad than simply resigned. This was the way he had always expected the world to go; snatching joy out of his hands for the sheer sake of doing it, and not because he, personally, had done anything to earn the loss.

Confection wasn't like that. Confection was Nonsense with rules, where baking soda would always leaven your cake and yeast would always rise. Confection could be Nonsensical because it had rules, and so Logical people could survive there, could even thrive there, once they had accepted that things weren't quite the same as they were in other worlds.

We have fallen into the sugar shaker. We are the ground beneath you. Let someone else describe the sky. Hold us in silence. Do no throw us back into some discussion.

When the world remembers what it is to have mercy on the longing and the lost.

Maybe this is a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious.

This was Confection, land of the culinary art become miracle; land of lonely children whose hands itched for pie tins or rolling pins, for the comfortable predictability of timers and sugar scoops and heaping cups of flour. This was a land where perfectly measured ingredients created nonsensical towers of whimsy and wonder - and maybe that was why they could be here, logical creatures that they were, without feeling assaulted by the world around them.

Becoming the savior of a world of wonder and magic before you turn fourteen does not exactly teach caution, in most cases, and many of the children who fall through the cracks in the world where they were born will one day find themselves opening the wrong door, peering through the wrong keyhole, and standing right back where they started. For some, this is a blessing. For some, it is easy to put the adventures and the impossibilities of the past behind them, choosing sanity and predictability and the world that they were born to be a part of. For others..... For others, the lure of a world where they fit is too great to escape, and they will spend the rest of their lives rattling at windows and peering at locks, trying to find the way home. Trying to find the one perfect door that can take them there, despite everything, despite the unlikeliness of it all.

Sometimes I think that’s part of what we do wrong. We try to make things make sense, even when they’re never going to.

I’m not really into cremating my cookies.

which floated like a bath toy for the world’s most morbid child.

So it is like flour and it's not like gingersnaps and you're still the person in charge of this whole world, so why can't you just decide that what you're baking now is a happy ending for everyone involved?

The children disliked pretending to be ordinary delinquents, sent away by their parents for starting fires or breaking windows, when really they had been sent away for slaying dragons and refusing to say that they hadn’t.

She won't be, not yet," said Rini. "If this worked, she's not my mother today, and if it didn't, she wont be my mother tomorrow. Is it better, in Logic? Where time does the same thing every day, and runs in just one line, and your mother is always your mother, and can always wipe your tears and tell you that there, there, it's going to be all right, you are my peppermint star and my sugar syrup sea, and I'll never leave you, and I certainly won't get killed before you can even be born?" Cora hesitated. "Not always," she said finally, and looked away. Rini looked relieved. "Good. I don't know if I could live with the idea that everyone else had it better and we had it worse, just because we didn't want to always do things in the same order every day.

I always thought falling in love would feel like an endless summer. Warm and whimsical, sugar-sweet sherbet and sparklers lighting the sky. But it was autumn now, and the world was still beautiful, and it all reminded me of her. I rested my head on her back and thought yes, hearing her laugh felt like jumping into a lake on the first day of summer vacation. But it also felt like this, like being wrapped in a the navy glow of a fall evening with golden leaves beneath our feet. It felt like an angel in a fresh layer of snow and a text message saying all schools were closed. Being around her felt like the opening of a tree bud after a long winter's sleep, and I wondered if that was what love *really* was. A four-season delight." -Avery

Love is like a drug that can either kill you, weaken you or make you stronger. Like a poison that finds it way through you body with each kiss, each touch and each look. It makes you feel euphoric. Makes you feel like you can take on anything that comes on your path. Whether it walks behind, in front or beside you. No mountain is high enough, no ocean deep enough and the sky had no limit. It can make you feel weak. Make you question everything around except the person who the love is for. But it can also destroy you in a way you never would have imagined was even possible. It hurts like a thousand knives twisting against your spine, paralyzing you. It can make you feel like the world just caved in around you, beneath you. You ask yourself if this is all worth it. Worth the euphoric feeling of someone loving you. Worth everything. I can tell you that in the end, it is. Because now you may feel destroyed, but keep in mind that a feeling is something that can be changed. There is someone who will build you up. Who will climb the highest mountain or cross the deepest oceans. Who makes you feel alive all for the right reasons. Someone who will not sugar coat his intentions. Who will not say he's someone he actually is not. Someone who wants you in his life. Who shows you off like a show pony to show everyone how proud he/she is to have you in his/her life. The feeling of destruction will fade when you meet someone who is willing to build you up. Who doesn't care how deep your roots have rooted itself into the earth to keep yourself grounded. Who will find every last stone to make sure your as strong as ever when everything else came crumbling down.

Cheating was always a matter of perspective, and of who was giving out the grades.)

Day after day, she had learned that “fat” was another way to say “worthless, ugly, waste of space, unwanted, disgusting.” She had started to believe them by the time she was in third grade, because what else was she supposed to do?

That’s why people shouldn’t get too hung up on labels. Sometimes I think that’s part of what we do wrong. We try to make things make sense, even when they’re never going to.

I don't have the vocabulary for this.” “Most people don't, until they need it, and then they need the whole thing at once.

Sea-foam tumbles onto the shore, claiming me gently in the way I've always craved. The ocean gathers me, carrying me over the surface like Cleopatra--- and I, every ounce as lovely as her and Aphrodite combined. Bit by bit the water swallows me, gently nipping at my skin until I dissolve into an aquatic spirit. Only then do I understand the language of angelfish and squid, and I move just as languidly. The sirens gape at me with their jewel-bright eyes and try to steal me as their own. But before I can be taken by those curious witches, I rise to the surface again. Everything glimmers here. I embrace the dusk with a hopeful smile. The sky blends into a watercolor of pastels and ambrosial stars. It's an aurora borealis of magenta and lavender, tempting me into the forest and away from the safety of the shore. Something's in the wind. I can feel it--- like the twinkling stars will finally lead me to the love I desire. I want it more than anything. The thought of it turns me feral, like a vampiress thirsty for a drop of blood. I dart through the forest, trailing a path of golden light. Past the evergreens and pines, underneath the moon, I become wild and free. Sweet summer fruit grows from trees, ripe and sparkling. With every cautious step I take, the flowers blossom. But they don't just grow. They glow. Ultraviolet irises, sugar-dusted peonies, and iridescent rosebuds unravel beneath my feet. Foxgloves bloom like trumpets, playing a regal procession beside twinkling bluebells. As I journey deeper into the forest, fireflies circle me, illuminating my path. And then I see him. I blink. He's awfully familiar, but I can't place my finger on who he is. He's beautiful. A boy with white-blond hair and viridescent eyes. Where have I seen him before? "Hello, Lila," he says. I stumble back. "How do you know my name?" He's peculiar. So unbelievably enchanting. I'm enthralled by the sound of his voice alone. "Don't be scared. You're safe here. I wanted to bring you somewhere special. Somewhere where you can make the forest beautiful with your dance." My dance. Of course, my dance. Witchlight flickers in his eyes. This world is meant for me. A gift wrapped up in velvet petals and sweet perfumes.

Sugar, flour, and cinnamon won’t make a house a home, So bake your walls of gingerbread and sweeten them with bone. Eggs and milk and whipping cream, butter in the churn, Bake our queen a castle in the hopes that she’ll return. —CHILDREN’S CLAPPING RHYME, CONFECTION

Maybe this s a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious.

This was the most delicious food she had ever eaten in her whole entire life. The bread tasted like the sun on the wheat fields, and inside the taste of the sun was the taste of the bursting kernels of the wheat, even of the rich dark crumbly soil that surrounded the roots of the wheat, even of the lives of the bugs and animals that had scurried through the wheat, even of the droppings of those foxes, beetles, and mice. And the homemade peach ice cream tasted overwhelmingly of sugar, cream, and peaches, but also of the bark and meat of the peach tree and the pink feet of the birds that had landed on it, and the sharp, brittle voices of those birds, also of the effort of the hand crank, of the stained, whorly wood of its sides, and of the sweat of the man who had worked it so long. Every taste should be as complicated as possible, and every taste goes up and down at the same time: up past the turtledoves to the far reaches of the sky, so that one final taste in everything is whiteness, and down all the way to the mud at the bottom of graves, then to the mud beneath that mud, so that another final taste in everything, in even peach ice cream, is the taste of blackness.

For long seconds, neither of them moved. The only sound in the forest was the wind luffing through the trees, their labored breathing, and the soft thud of their heartbeats. Then Call muttered something beneath his breath. Gathering his long limbs, he lifted himself away from her and regained his feet. His shaft was still hard, big and thick and jutting forward through his open fly as if they hadn’t just made wildly passionate love. Call rid himself of the condom, zipped his faded jeans, and turned to find her groping for her sweater, pulling it on to cover her naked breasts. Swearing, he reached down and snatched up her jeans and pink satin panties, which were tangled together and refused to come apart. “Here.” She blushed as he unwound the fabric, handing her first the panties, then the jeans, which she hurriedly pulled on. She didn’t look at him. Her cheeks were hot and her lacy pink bra still lay embarrassingly on the ground. She snatched it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. Charity swallowed, made herself turn and face him, tried to muster some sort of smile. “I…um…I don’t suppose we can blame this on your relief at finding me alive and safe.” He shook his head, his eyes still fixed on her face. “I don’t think so.” “Just lust then, I suppose.” He shrugged those wide shoulders and she wished he would put his shirt back on so she didn’t have to remember all that smooth muscle moving beneath her hands. “So it’s just a one-night stand.” His head came up. Eyes as blue as the sky bored into her. “In case you haven’t noticed, the sun is still up.” “The sun is always up in this place. What does that have to do with anything?” He pulled on his shirt and she suddenly wished he were bare-chested again. “It has to do with the fact that the night hasn’t even begun.” Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re not…you’re not saying what I think you are.” “I’m saying exactly what you think I am. If you believe what just happened is anything besides a warm-up, sugar, you had better think again. If I wasn’t worried that Maude might sent the Mounties up here to find us if we don’t get back soon, we’d start over again right here.” “B-but you said…we both said--” “I know exactly what we said. It’s a little late to be worrying about that now.” He looked at her and his deep voice softened. “Besides, I never really believed one night with you would be enough.” Relief trickled through her. Whatever was happening between them, it wasn’t over yet. She gave him a reluctant smile. “I never believed it either.” “Come on.” Call reached out and caught her hand. “It’s Friday. We’ve got the whole weekend ahead of us. Maybe by Monday, we’ll have had enough of each other.” “Maybe,” she said. But Charity didn’t really believe it and from the burning glance Call gave her, she didn’t think he did either.

couldn’t stop smiling—my writing was going to appear in the New York Times! Great Manhattan was a hedge-maze of desire that afternoon, I saw grace in every blade of grass and passing taxi. Gleeful, I was witness to a million passages and alleys: stepping-stones traversing parks to brick walkways beneath glassy high-rise headquarters, industrial lofts transformed into homes and powdered sugar I would never taste in bakeries I’d never enter, and fortune tellers I would not speak to—too many paths to ever walk them all. And for the first time in my life, the road I walked appeared exactly as the road I’d choose. Every pipe dream I’d imagined felt five times more possible. Wandering cobblestone streets, I glimpsed a metal staircase off West Fourteenth Street, rising from the center of the sidewalk, a shaded vision. Of course I climbed it, upward—to the top. I found myself on a walkway in the sky, clouds surreal

I'm so glad I saw your forbidding scowl on TV and decided to apply for Operation Cake anyway." "Clearly, so am I, but don't expect a follow-up that I'm grateful your version of Cupid's arrow was a unicorn catapult." Her laughter was echoed in his eyes as they stood entwined under the night sky, the ice glittering on the ground beneath their feet, the growing moonbeams slipping through the faint mist. Despite everything, as the Sugar Fair motto said, Vita est plena magices. Life is full of magic.

I always thought falling in love would feel like an endless summer. Warm and whimsical, sugar-sweet sherbet and sparklers lighting the sky. But it was autumn now, and the world was still beautiful, and it all reminded me of her. I rested my hand on her back and thought yes, hearing her laugh felt like jumping into a lake on the first day of summer vacation. But it also felt like this, like being wrapped in the navy glow of a fall evening with golden leaves beneath our feet. It felt like an angel in a fresh layer of snow and a text message saying all schools were closed. Being around her felt like the opening of a tree bud after a long winter's sleep, and I wondered if that was what love really ways. A four-season delight.

She didn’t like the idea that people who already had socially acceptable bodies would get the adventures, too. She knew it was a small and petty thought, one she shouldn’t have had in the first place, much less indulged, but she couldn’t stop herself from feeling how she felt.