Maleficent Quotes

But, as many thought whenever they saw the graceful figure soaring through the air, it took a great hero and a terrible villain to make it all come about. And her name was Maleficent.

Hell of simulation, which is no longer one of torture, but of subtle, maleficent, elusive twisting of meaning...

I will not ask you for forgiveness. What I have done is unforgivable. I was so lost in hatred and revenge. I never dreamed that I could love you so much. You stole what was left of my heart. And now I’ve lost you forever.

Annis had never been a people person, unless ‘people person’ was defined as a person who ate people.

You said I was your number-one pick." "And you are. In our hearts. Alphabetically, though, Dusk comes before you.

While my insides may be rotten, I still like a good reason to kill someone. It has to be either business, personal, or out of sheer boredom.

Donegan Bane and Gracious O'Callahan - the Monster Hunters. Adventurers, inventors, authors of Monster Hunting for Beginners and it's sequels, Monster Hunting for Beginners is Probably Inadvisable and Seriously, Dude, Stop Monster Hunting.

Sanguine chuckled. "I like you, boy. You got optimism in these bones. I like you so much that I ain't gonna tell you what I did to poor old Jethro, the first Jethro, may he rest in peace, may they someday find his head.

I think a lot about queer villains, the problem and pleasure and audacity of them. I know I should have a very specific political response to them. I know, for example, I should be offended by Disney’s lineup of vain, effete ne’er-do-wells (Scar, Jafar), sinister drag queens (Ursula, Cruella de Vil), and constipated, man-hating power dykes (Lady Tremaine, Maleficent). I should be furious at Downton Abbey’s scheming gay butler and Girlfriend’s controlling, lunatic lesbian, and I should be indignant about Rebecca and Strangers on a Train and Laura and The Terror and All About Eve, and every other classic and contemporary foppish, conniving, sissy, cruel, humorless, depraved, evil, insane homosexual on the large and small screen. And yet, while I recognize the problem intellectually—the system of coding, the way villainy and queerness became a kind of shorthand for each other—I cannot help but love these fictional queer villains. I love them for all of their aesthetic lushness and theatrical glee, their fabulousness, their ruthlessness, their power. They’re always by far the most interesting characters on the screen. After all, they live in a world that hates them. They’ve adapted; they’ve learned to conceal themselves. They’ve survived.

Ladies and gentleman," he said over the speakers, "welcome aboard this recently liberated Gulfstream V. If I could have your attention for just a few moments, I'd like to go over the safety features of this aircraft. It has an engine, to make us go, and wings, to keep us in the air. There are seatbelts, which won't do you an awful lot of good if we fly into the side of a mountain.

This is stolen? We're in a stolen jet?" "Not stolen," said Donegan Bane from the co-pilot's seat. "Almost stolen," Gracious corrected. "Semi-stolen," said Donegan. "Quasi-stolen," said Gracious. Aurora's frown did not turn upside down. "So is it stolen or not?" Donegan and Gracious hesitated. "Yes," they both said together.

His eyes were polite yet maleficent, as though he was making an effort to be civil to the photographer while plotting to murder his wife.

They feed you." "I eat people. They don't give me people to eat. They give me animals. That's barbaric. At least people have a fighting chance to get away. The animals they give me are already dead. It's sickening, that's what it is." "Annis, you're a unique individual.

If I ever did go maleficer, if I ever did start pulling malia out of people like toffee and tossing off those killing spells of mine left and right, I’d be unstoppable. Maybe literally. Raining death and destruction on all the enclaves of the world like a maw-mouth myself, like the biggest maw-mouth ever, tearing the others apart because they were my competition.

Her eyes were full of hate. Full. And... at the same time, empty. Soulless. Like those horrible creatures she keeps around her. The dragon was frightening... but Maleficent, she was bone-chilling.

Duchess was barking her head off as she raced after a snarling, hissing, yowling white ball of Maleficent. Aphrodite was chasing after the dog, screaming for her to ''Come! Stay. Be good, damnit!'' Damien was close behind her, flailing his arms and yelling ''Duchess! Come!'' All of a sudden the Twins' cat, the huge and very stuck-up Beelzebub joined in the chase, only he was tearing around after Duchess. ''Ohmygod! Beelzebub! Honey!'' Shaunee ran into my view, yelling at the top of her very healthy lungs. ''Beelzebub! Duchess! Stop!'' Erin wailed, right behind her twin. Darius suddenly burst out into the hallway, and I stepped back behind the curtains, not sure is my shrouding could be detected by him. Apparently he didn't notice me, or anything else, because he ran into the Council Room. I peeked through the drapes and could hear him telling Neferet that she was needed on the school grounds-that there was an 'altercation.' Then Neferet was hurrying out of the room and down the hall, following Darius into the dog-barking, cat-yowling, kid-screaming craziness. I noticed that through all of it I hadn't seen hide nor hair of Jack. Talk about an excellent diversion!

Who's your friend?" "I'm glad you asked that," said Tanith. "Her name's Darquesse and she's lovely. You'll love her, you really will. She's so funny and nice and she's great to hang out with." Sabine frowned. "Isn't she the one they're saying will destroy the world?" "OK, Sabine, for a start, I don't know why you're being so negative about this. How about waiting until you've met her before you start judging her? Think you can do that? Secondly, it's not destroying the world, it's destroying some bits of the world.

We're not here to discuss Maleficent! Her story is too long and complicated to debate in the time we have left...

Aurora sagged. "Why is it," she asked, "that every time I'm with you two we end up stealing something big?" "We always return it," Donegan said, a little defensively. "Maybe not always in one piece or necessarily to the right person but return it we do, and so it is not stealing, it is merely borrowing." Gracious looked at him. "It's a little bit stealing." "Anyone who leaves a private jet just lying around deserves to have it stolen." "It wasn't lying around," said Gracious. "It was locked up tight. It took us an hour to dismantle the security system and get inside." Donegan looked at him. "You're not helping.

It is the simulacrum which ensures the continuity of the real today, the simulacrum which now conceals not the truth, but the fact that there isn’t any—that is to say, the continuity of the nothing... Well, that is paradise: we are beyond the Last Judgment, in immortality. The only problem is to survive there. For there the irony, the challenging, the anticipation, the maleficence come to an end, as inexorably as hope dies at the gates of hell. And it is indeed there that hell begins, the hell of the unconditional realization of all ideas, the hell of the real.

Practically every princess in peril has been saved by Love's First Kiss! For goodness' sake, between witches and fairies, can't we think of something more original? I'm weary of this. Why must a young girl need a man to save her? Why can't a princess fight for her own life, break her own curse? Why must it always be a prince? By Hades, I want to kill Prince Phillip on principle, just so we don't have yet one more prince kissing some helpless sleeping girl, making her feel like she has to marry him out of gratitude.

It was a lonely place. A place for the dark-hearted. It's where I deserve to be, Maleficent told herself every time she arrived. For only someone with a heart as dark as mine could do something so evil to a girl with a heart as light as Aurora's.

I have a question," said Jack. "Questions later." "You keep sayin' sneak in and sneak out stuff. My question is-" "No questions." "-once this Starke bloke realises he's been robbed-" "I'm pretty sure I said no questions." "-the owners of the other weapons are gonna heighten security, so won't that mess up our mission?" "First of all," Tanith said, "we have a no question rule. I literally just established it, like right there. I know you were here for that because it was two minutes ago. Now, I understand that you're used to being my enemy so your natural inclination is to do the opposite of whatever I say, but you're just going to have to get over it. Agreed?

It’s a stereotype,” he hissed. “It’s a damn stereotype and it’s harmful. If this catches on, we’ll have all sorts of sorcerers running around, waving wands and chanting spells. Do you know how ridiculous we’d look?” Tanith shrugged. “I liked Harry Potter.” “This ain’t about Harry Potter!” “You liked Harry Potter as well.” “They’re good books,” he snapped, “but I do not agree with this wand business. All those guys down there, criminals and mobsters and gangsters, and who are they taking orders from? A wizard with a wand. How can they take him seriously? How are they going to take us seriously when we attack?

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Yeah," Aadhya agreed. "The school wants you to go maleficer. What could you do if you decided to start using malia?" If you had me make a list of the top ten questions I go to great lengths to avoid asking myself, that one would have comprehensively covered items one through nine, and the only reason it wasn't doing for item ten as well was that So how do you feel about Orion Lake had quietly crept onto the bottom of it. But it's a long way from the rest.

And then... she heard voices. Her aunt's voice... 'Your daughter?' Maleficent asked, her voice rising in dramatic surprise. 'Really? What kind of loving mother hands her daughter off to the fairies for sixteen years?'... Maleficent swung around, arching her arms and fingers like an animal, lowering her yellow eyes to their level.

We could wear disguises," said Frightening. Aurora nodded quickly. "Like a false beard. I've always wanted to wear a false beard." Vex frowned. "But you're a woman." "Exactly. They'd never suspect it was me.

Si indrazneala cu care Nietzsche rostea lucrurile! Incredibil! Sa spui ca speranta e cel mai mare rau! Ca Dumnezeu a murit! Ca adevarul este o greseala fara de care nu putem trai! Ca dusmanii adevarului nu sunt minciunile, ci convingerile! Ca rasplata ultima a celui mort este ca nu va mai muri! Ca medicii nu au nici un drept sa deposedeze un om de moartea sa! Ganduri malefice! Il contrazisese pe Nietzsche la fiecare dintre ele. Si totusi, era o falsa polemica: in adancul inimii, el stia ca Nietzsche are dreptate.

Dignity is never silent. It has a voice, heart and soul. Truth and courage is its foundation. It will stand against the masses and speak the truth. Because every great person has always done what others found fear in doing.

MALEFICENT GIRLS" The ones born with fairy blood, who dance with their darkness and roam quiet places conversing with crows and clouds... ~A. Eleazer~ SHE'S MAGIC & MIDNIGHT LACE

What I'd saved: lost. Worse: I lost it. Can't even tell myself that I sort of lost it that lost I keep it still. I lost the saved. I've lost. I'm lost. This is pain, one dies of or kills. Kill it and one kills oneself. Splashes of bloody skin all over my notebooks. I haven't forgotten a dream, as it is written happens in the realm of dreams. One forgets a dream, then one forgets one has forgotten, nothing dies of this. I've lost The Dream. I cannot tell a soul. I will not enter alive into the beyond. I search for an explanation. To the labyrinth I descend with the chapeau. Maleficent remains but remains, therefore blessed. If I could ask my friend. No one else. He and only he knows the extraordinary value of what is lost, greater by far that the value of what one keeps. Suddenly I'm only this torch consuming itself. What to do? I had the papers, I took them from myself, I threw them in the Trash, I threw out my own being, I had the memory of the future at the window I broke me, I tore up the secret into a thousand pieces, I tweezed the sublime out of me, I had god I squashed him with a hat, this is not the first time I take myself to the labyrinth but this is the first time I go down into the labyrinth. I went right by the very trash bin of my being, how can you do away with your own eyes, I did it, who knows how

I thought we were a team," Annis said. Tanith looked down at her. "We are a team." "And Sabine? Wasn't she part of it, too?" "She was a very important part. She was payment." "Are you going to betray us like you betrayed her?

You look like a princess. One with the heart and skill of a warrior.

But I would let you suck me dry, little viper—I’d drink poison from your mouth, lick venom from your tongue.

Faeries can be quite mean if they are provoked.

If she actually had friends, maybe she wouldn't have turned out so nasty and evil.

What Mal wanted, more than anything, was to be just like her mother. Exactly like her.

And I have lifetimes inside me, I'm the girl you see standing here,and I'm a cranky old professor, and I'm a peace-loving man, and I'm a killer and a maid and a king and a peasant. I am a dozen more. You think you're old? You got nothing on me.

The colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say with the help of the army and the police force, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil. Native society is not simply described as a society lacking in values. It is not enough for the colonist to affirm that those values have disappeared from, or still better never existed in, the colonial world. The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element, disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of maleficent powers, the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces.

My fairytale was full of witches, pixies, pirates, dementors, princesses, clowns, true love, betrayal, battles and kings. Yet, I stood on the edge of never and with the bravery of a queen I could see across forever....and I whisphered to the wind, "Morals of great stories didn’t live in kindness. They bloomed from the ashes of who you were to where you were meant to be."

By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night’s epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she’d moved on. She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon’s Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn’t see her as anything other than her father’s daughter—in other words, a pathetic, soft human—until Mal could prove her wrong. Mal kept reliving last night’s conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady

Medusa reminds us that we must not take the female “monster” at face value; that we must not only weigh her beneficent against her maleficent attributes but also take into consideration the worldview and sociopolitical stance of the patriarchal cultures which create her, fashioning the demonic female as scapegoat for the benefit and comfort of the male members of their societies.

Fat Charlie had had no real liking for the police, but until now, he had still managed to cling to a fundamental trust in the natural order of things, a conviction that there was some kind of power--a Victorian might have thought of it as Providence--that ensured that the guilty would be punished while the innocent would be set free. This faith had collapsed in the face of recent events and had been replaced by the suspicion that he would spend the rest of his life pleading his innocence to a variety of implacable judges and tormenters, many of whom would look like Daisy, and that he would in all probability wake up in cell six the next morning to find that he had been transformed into an enormous cockroach. He had definitely been transported to the kind of maleficent universe that transformed people into cockroaches.

You ruined my life, you beautiful fucking bastard.” “Destroy me then,” he says hoarsely. “Be my goddess of doom, of vengeance. Kill me, and set yourself free. They’ve tried to end me, you know. So many have tried,

From the other side of the hill, two enormous black wings appeared through the mist. Then a pair of sharp, twisted horns. Slowly, Maleficent rose into the air, looking like a creature from hell. Behind her, there was only mist. No army of her own. No faeries or creatures. Just Maleficent.

God, what I wouldn’t give to live in a fairytale, sometimes. Or even just a romantic comedy. In them, this wouldn’t fly. Like, imagine if Prince Charming had picked up the glass slipper and decided the city was too big to scour it for someone who fit the damn thing? Or if Prince Phillip saw Maleficent blowing fire all over the forest and went nope, fuck that, too risky? Or if Prince Eric was all like, “Hmm, I could fight the giant octopus sea witch from my nightmares, but then I could also sail home and return to eating fish I now know are sentient, safe in denial and cognitive goddamn dissonance!”? But they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have done any of that, because in stories guys fight. They fight for the person they care about, and they don't give up, ever.

softly, her voice cracking with emotion. “I will not ask you for forgiveness. What I have done is unforgivable. I was so lost in hatred and revenge. I never dreamed that I could love you so much. You stole what was left of my heart. And now I’ve lost you forever.” She paused, wiping a tear. “But I swear, no harm will come to you as long as I live…and not a day shall pass that I won’t miss your smile.…

Diaval," she hissed, "we are going to follow Aurora." "Are we, mistress? How very different from my usual orders." She scowled at him and he gave her a grin. It was useless trying to intimidate the raven-man these days. He knew her entirely too well.

I love you beyond reason, with all the persistence of revenge and all the violence of hate. I love you with the bones beneath my flesh and the blood in my veins. I love you into the deepest dark and under the harshest light. Let me be your Forever. You are already mine.

Jethro, you have been a most helpful captive." "Are you... are you going to let me live?" Sanguine's grin grew wider. "Not even remotely.

Sabine pulled herself out of the water behind him, and glared up as she hung there. "You spat on me.

Mother Nature is not beneficent. She is not maleficent either of course. Merely augustly, majestically capricious.

Suddenly, a brilliant burst of green light shot up from the highest tower, warning every nearby creature that Maleficent was in a terrible rage.

Maleficent had come to realize it was her fondness for Opal that allowed her to see though her eyes.

Now she was tainted; transformed by her parent’s maleficent desires for power and fortune. I pitied her. But more so, I missed the friend I once had.

Maleficent, calling upon the powers of hell.

Maleficent.

together. But, as many thought whenever they saw the graceful figure soaring through the air, it took a great hero and a terrible villain to make it all come about. And her name was Maleficent.

You zapped your own brain?" "And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the moodswings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count numb fingertips. Which I don't." "Because he also lost the ability to count," said Donegan. "That was temporary," snapped Gracious.

She'd never really liked companionship before, but then again, Maleficent had always insisted that they lived apart from the pack - superior, alone and bent on revenge. Lonely, Mal thought. I was lonely. And so were they. Evie, with her beauty-obsessed mother; Carlos, with his screeching harpy of a parent; Jay, the happy-go-lucky thief with a quick wit and dashing smile, who could steal anything in the world except his father's heart.

You might like Tinker Bell and hope one day will be all pixie dust and beauty, but you’re much more like Maleficent—fighting for those who can’t always fight for themselves and willing to lose her ability to fly to protect many.

A higher understanding of human freedom, however, is inseparable from a definition of human nature. To be free is to be able to flourish as the kind of being one is, and so to attain the ontological good toward which one's nature is oriented; freedom is the unhindered realization of a complex nature in its proper end (natural and supernatural), and this is consummate liberty and happiness. The will that chooses poorly, then - through ignorance, maleficence, or corrupt desire - has not thereby become freer, but has further enslaved itself to those forces that prevent it from achieving its full expression. And it is this richer understanding of human freedom that provides us some analogy to the freedom of God. For God is infinite actuality, the source and end of all being, the eternally good, for whom mere arbitrary 'choice' - as among possibilities that somehow exceed his 'present' actuality - would be a deficiency, a limitation placed upon his infinite power to be God. His freedom is the impossibility of any force, pathos, or potentiality interrupting the perfection of his nature or hindering him in the realization of his own illimitable goodness, in himself and in his creatures. To be 'capable' of evil - to be able to do evil or to be affected by an encounter with it - would in fact be an incapacity in God; and to require evil to bring about his good ends would make him less than the God he is. The object of God's will is his own infinite goodness, and it is an object perfectly realized, and so he is FREE.

I'm almost finished," said Wilhelm, wiping out a line with his sleeve and drawing over it. "I never doubted you for a moment," said Vex, then looked at Aurora and spoke more softly. "I actually doubted him the whole time. He's really not very good." Wilhelm turned. "I'm standing right in front of you. I can hear literally every sound you make." "Wilhelm, please," said Vex, "this is a private conversation.

Sanguine took a moment, finding it hard to process the information. "He... this guy uses a wand? For real? He actually uses a wand? Like a wizard?... Don't the other Necromancers have any sense of pride? What's he gonna do next, fly around on a broomstick? This ain't Harry Potter.

What lies within the purlieu of the null? This is like asking the true names of the gods, or what force decimated the Tamesian land bridge. That response will differ depending upon the one providing the answer. In essence, the purlieu of the null is a plane of existence absent the encumbrance of space or time. It’s a realm of everything and nothing…of beings who are and are not: ubiquitous within the confines of mortality. The Nyeshetari aren’t as creatures of myth and tales, they’re the embodiment of maleficence, beset upon the mortal world to consume all that we are…all that we could become.

In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives with eyes hollower than those of suburban streetwalkers; music-hall chorus girls who tip creosote into their Roederer when getting drunk... I have even had the awkward androgynes, the unsexed dishes of the day of the *tables d'hote* of Montmartre. Like any vulgar follower of fashion, like any member of the herd, I have made love to bony and improbably slender little girls, frightened and macabre, spiced with carbolic and peppered with chlorotic make-up. Like an imbecile, I have believed in the mouths of prey and sacrificial victims. Like a simpleton, I have believed in the large lewd eyes of a ragged heap of sickly little creatures: alcoholic and cynical shop girls and whores. The profundity of their eyes and the mystery of their mouths... the jewellers of some and the manicurists of others furnish them with *eaux de toilette*, with soaps and rouges. And Fanny the etheromaniac, rising every morning for a measured dose of cola and coca, does not put ether only on her handkerchief. It is all fakery and self-advertisement - *truquage and battage*, as their vile argot has it. Their phosphorescent rottenness, their emaciated fervour, their Lesbian blight, their shop-sign vices set up to arouse their clients, to excite the perversity of young and old men alike in the sickness of perverse tastes! All of it can sparkle and catch fire only at the hour when the gas is lit in the corridors of the music-halls and the crude nickel-plated decor of the bars. Beneath the cerise three-ply collars of the night-prowlers, as beneath the bulging silks of the cyclist, the whole seductive display of passionate pallor, of knowing depravity, of exhausted and sensual anaemia - all the charm of spicy flowers celebrated in the writings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barres - is nothing but a role carefully learned and rehearsed a hundred times over. It is a chapter of the MANCHON DE FRANCINE read over and over again, swotted up and acted out by ingenious barnstormers, fully conscious of the squalid salacity of the male of the species, and knowledgeable in the means of starting up the broken-down engines of their customers. To think that I also have loved these maleficent and sick little beasts, these fake Primaveras, these discounted Jocondes, the whole hundred-franc stock-in-trade of Leonardos and Botticellis from the workshops of painters and the drinking-dens of aesthetes, these flowers mounted on a brass thread in Montparnasse and Levallois-Perret! And the odious and tiresome travesty - the corsetted torso slapped on top of heron's legs, painful to behold, the ugly features primed by boulevard boxes, the fake Dresden of Nina Grandiere retouched from a medicine bottle, complaining and spectral at the same time - of Mademoiselle Guilbert and her long black gloves!... Have I now had enough of the horror of this nightmare! How have I been able to tolerate it for so long? The fact is that I was then ignorant even of the nature of my sickness. It was latent in me, like a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. I have cherished it since... perhaps since early childhood, for it must always have been in me, although I did not know it!

Saracen Rue knows things." That's what Dexter Vex was told all those hundreds of years ago before they first met. He couldn't remember who had introduced them - Skulduggery? Ravel? Ghastly maybe - but when he'd been asked what magical discipline Saracen had chosen, he'd been assured that "Saracen Rue knows things." That was all.

THIS IS THE STORY OF THE FAERIE MALEFICENT. Not the story you think you know. Not the one that starts with a curse and ends with a dragon. No. This is what really happened. And while it may have a curse and a dragon, it has much more. For it is a story of lost love, found friendships, and, ultimately, the power of a single kiss.…

I know you.” The words jerk out of me, like splinters being plucked from a wound. “I’ve seen you before. In my nightmares.

human girl.

There's an I in menagerie. - Black Annis

I'm traumatized. My life flashed before my eyes. You're life in re-runs would traumatize anyone. You're fine.

The girl looked down at her plate. "Why didn't you tell me?" "Would it have made it easier to kill a murderer?" The girl paused. "Yes." "Then what kind of test would it have been?" Quoneel asked.

I have chiseled features. Look. Look how chiseled they are. And my teeth are at least as white as his. You seriously think he's good-lookin'?" "I do," said Tanith. "Right," Sanguine said and nodded. "I'm gonna kill him." She kept her laugh soft so it wouldn't travel. "I think he's good-looking, but I think you're better looking." "Oh," Sanguine said. "I mean, yeah. I am. I'm glad you noticed.

There was a princess, Aurora, named for the dawn. Her hair was as golden as the crown that would one day rest upon her head. Her eyes were as wide and soft as those of a doe. From the time of her birth, no one could look upon her and not love her.

And I have lifetimes inside me, I'm the girl you see standing here,and I'm a cranky old professor, and I'm a peace-loving man, and I'm a killer and a maid and a king and a peasant. I am a dozen more. You think you're old? You got nothing on me." - Tanith Low

For all my moments of doubt, of self-hate, of despair, I am not weak. I have never been weak. If nothing else, my inner torment prepared me to withstand this, because I have plunged myself down into the bowels of darkness and I have clawed my way out again, every time.

You’re not a pawn to me,” he grits out. “You’re the Queen, the King, the entire endgame. You’re the answer to your own salvation, because if this works, you’ll wake to a world you can enjoy for decades. A world in which your heirs can live safely, without fear of the Edge.

This isn't the first time I've used this, and the test subject showed no signs of impaired cognitive ability." "Who was the test subject?" asked Aurora. "I test everything out on myself before taking it into the field." She stared at him. "You zapped your own brain?" "And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the mood swings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count the numb fingertips. Which I don't.

My true gifts," she said. "Returned to me." "Truly useless gifts," Maleficent said. "What good are grace and song and beauty- especially to a dead girl?" "Not those gifts. Those were bestowed upon me by 'others.' These are my true, natural gifts. Intelligence. Bravery. Compassion. "Those three you 'killed' weren't actual fairies at all- they were parts of me. My true self. Hidden from me by you. Dampened. Darkened. Just like everything else in this wretched realm. Just as I myself was hidden away from the world, first in the woods, and then in a dream.

Just as in the microcosm there are seven ‘windows’ in the head (two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth), so in the macrocosm God has placed two beneficent stars (Jupiter, Venus), two maleficent stars (Mars, Saturn), two luminaries (sun and moon), and one indifferent star (Mercury). The seven days of the week follow from these. Finally, since ancient times the alchemists had made each of the seven metals correspond to one of the planets; gold to the sun, silver to the moon, copper to Venus, quicksilver to Mercury, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, lead to Saturn. From these and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven... Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations as well as modern Europeans, have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have named them from the seven planets; now if we increase the number of planets, this whole system falls to the ground... Moreover, the satellites [of Jupiter] are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist.

And after all we've been through this century, would it be so terrible, to see the end of man's unquestioned dominance? I find it hard to believe that a machine, programmed for equanimity and rational synthesis, could ever act as maleficent as we humans have already proven ourselves capable of acting. I fail to summon the specter of a machine more harmful than Hitler or Mussolini. And yet perhaps its our own nature that gives us concern. We know how badly we might treat such a creature, and it's difficult to believe the end will be happy. But that, you know, would be our own damned fault, and certainly not the machines'.

Why are you still here? And why won’t you give me back my key, dammit?” “Because your daughter asked me to check on you five years ago, and for some reason that I can’t explain, I really enjoy that arching thing you do with your eyebrow when you pretend to be shocked by things I’m saying. Very Maleficent of you. You can admit it—you watch the movie and practice, don’t you?” Myrna’s frown deepens to villainess levels at the mention of her daughter. “Ungrateful child. Never comes to visit. Too busy with her superficial life to even remember the woman who gave birth to her.” This isn’t the first time she’s said it, or even the twentieth time. “Yep, she’s really superficial, what with being a member of Congress and all.” “I’m sure she slept her way to the top.” Ouch, Myrna is especially pissed today. I play along with her anyway, because at least this way I know she’s getting her heart rate up. Being pissed off is about as close to cardio as she gets. “You know, I’ll have to check. Chances are she really did—with every man, woman, and tranny in her congressional district. She’s going to need surgery to tighten up that cooch of hers.” “Get out!

Would you like to know what it’s like to have your wings again? Imagine falling, except instead of hitting the ground, you soar. Imagine beginning to believe that love is never a lie, even if there are liars. Imagine recalling that cracked bone grows back stronger. That scars are beautiful. You might not be quite who you were when you lost the power of flight. But it is only in having your wings resting heavy on your back again that you realize you always and forever belonged to the sky. You were always strong and fierce and full of magic. Even when you were stranded on the ground.

I want porridge!" she said, exasperated. "That's all. I wanted a bunny before and 'it' appeared, and now I want porridge. The way my aunts used to make it on cold mornings. Warm and buttery, with rich toasted acorns in it." "Acorns? Really? That sounds... um... I mean, it's an interesting gastronomic choice." She rolled her eyes. "We lived in the middle of a 'forest,' Royal Prince. It was what we had. And a real treat in the middle of winter." Then she proceeded to ignore him. She closed her eyes and cupped her hands. She prayed and wished and imagined and begged. Phillip stayed politely silent- though he did look around, sigh a little, and do all sorts of other things to obviously fret over the passage of time. She tried to call up the feel of the wooden bowl in her hands: it warmed almost like flesh where the wood was thin and the heat of her fingers and the hot porridge mingled. She summoned the smell, a mix of dairy and things of the earth and the tall green grass and the woods. Sometimes there was even a dollop of honey on top. She thought so hard she felt like she had to go to the privy. Her concentration faltered for a moment when she distractedly wondered if that ever happened to Maleficent when she was performing an incantation. But after a few seconds she was back in her dream of porridge. Time passed... "GOOD LORD!" The smell in her head was giving to a real scent in her nose now, with even that faint, almost 'un'tasty burnt smell the acorns sometimes gave off. She smiled and opened her eyes. In her hands was a cracked wooden bowl full of porridge, just like she remembered.

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans-the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins. Let us consider a few examples of bad plans belonging to these two classes. In the first class we must place all Fascist and all specifically militaristic plans. Fascism, in the words of Mussolini, believes that "war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it." Again, "a doctrine which is founded upon the harmful postulate of peace is hostile to Fascism." The Fascist, then, is one who believes that the bombardment of open towns with fire, poison and explosives (in other words, modern war) is intrinsically good. He is one who rejects the teaching of the prophets and believes that the best society is a national society living in a state of chronic hostility towards other national societies and preoccupied with ideas of rapine and slaughter. He is one who despises the non-attached individual and holds up for admiration the person who, in obedience to the boss who happens at the moment to have grabbed political power, systematically cultivates all the passions (pride, anger, envy, hatred) which the philosophers and the founders of religions have unanimously condemned as the most maleficent, the least worthy of human beings. All fascist planning has one ultimate aim: to make the national society more efficient as a war machine. Industry, commerce and finance are controlled for this purpose. The manufacture of substitutes is encouraged in order that the country may be self-sufficient in time of war. Tariffs and quotas are imposed, export bounties distributed, exchanges depreciated for the sake of gaining a momentary advantage or inflicting loss upon some rival. Foreign policy is conducted on avowedly Machiavellian principles; solemn engagements are entered into with the knowledge that they will be broken the moment it seems advantageous to do so; international law is invoked when it happens to be convenient, repudiated when it imposes the least restraint on the nation's imperialistic designs. Meanwhile the dictator's subjects are systematically educated to be good citizens of the Fascist state. Children are subjected to authoritarian discipline that they may grow up to be simultaneously obedient to superiors and brutal to those below them. On leaving the kindergarten, they begin that military training which culminates in the years of conscription and continues until the individual is too decrepit to be an efficient soldier. In school they are taught extravagant lies about the achievements of their ancestors, while the truth about other peoples is either distorted or completely suppressed. the press is controlled, so that adults may learn only what it suits the dictator that they should learn. Any one expressing un-orthodox opinions is ruthlessly persecuted. Elaborate systems of police espionage are organized to investigate the private life and opinions of even the humblest individual. Delation is encouraged, tale-telling rewarded. Terrorism is legalized. Justice is administered in secret; the procedure is unfair, the penalties barbarously cruel. Brutality and torture are regularly employed.

On day six, the other gods of the pantheon arrived on boats to join in the festivities. They gathered in the shrine on the top of Etemenanki as sacrifices were offered. Then the little clay figurines of mankind were struck by priests and purified in fire for the atonement of the people.   Abram was allowed to stay in the city under the protection of Mikael. He wondered what God’s remedy was to be for this obscene fulcrum of corruption and depravity. Why was mass destruction ruled out? What could possibly be enough? It was not just the city that was malignant; it was the entire earth that had come to be “one” under this maleficent tyrant. They all spoke one language, had one religion, and served one god king and pantheon.

Steve was a genius with a flair for design, a shaman whose storytelling power could generate something magical and maleficent called a “reality distortion field”; he was a pompous jerk who disregarded everyone else in his single-minded pursuit of perfection;

Several older women sat around it, mending sheets and dresses by hand. That’s odd, Aurora thought. In a place this big, one would think seamstresses would be given spinning wheels to use. Her aunts had always told her that spinning wheels were silly things. That you could sew much better with your fingers than with a wheel. But Aurora wasn’t completely naive. There was no way a castle this size could have everything mended by hand. That once again raised the question: where were all the spinning wheels?

A place can be a living, breathing thing. It can shimmer with joy or with maleficence.

She smiled again, taking one last look at the Prince and Belle dancing in the great hall before wiping their image from the enchanted mirror, leaving them to live and love happily ever after.

The American Indian's theory of disease is the theory of the Chaldean, the Assyrian, the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman—all bodily disorders and ailments are attributed to the maleficence of spirits who must be expelled or placated.

Gaston, the prince of Buttchinland, trying to take his Circe away!

Medusa continues to be viewed as protective and apotropaic—warding off evil, warding off the enemy—and even healing in the Greek tradition, but she has also lost her power. It is thus important to pay attention to her beneficent aspects: the fact that half of her blood is healing, and that images of her head are used to protect buildings of multiple functions within the Greco-Roman sphere; so protective is she considered to be that her head was buried near the Argive market-place. Medusa is magical. She reminds us that we must not take the female “monster” at face value; that we must weigh not only her beneficent against her maleficent attributes, but we must also take into consideration the world view and the sociopolitical stance of the cultures which create her, fashioning the demonic female as scapegoat for the benefit and comfort of the patriarchal members of their societies.

PROLOGUE Fortress of Rakatoll, day twenty-three of the siege. Seven hours before it all went to shit.

From Hive, the party rode the sturdy slaver barge downriver to the coast. None of them had any experience in navigating anything larger than a puddle, never mind a river swollen with winter melt water, so it swiftly became a nerve-racking trip for all involved.

Ogo is witchcraft, the product of maleficent sorcery. Sorcery shares many odu when speaking of its birth and evolution. The odu Ogundá (3) gives birth to maleficent witchcraft due to Ogundá’s association with Arayé; they were husband and wife, and she taught him much of her wicked witchcraft. Also, there was a time in his life when Ogundá had a wandering heart, and it led him into the land of the Congo. There he learned the secrets of nganga (shamanism and medicine) and nfumbe (spirits of the dead), and he brought both back to the land of the Lucumí. Congolese practices are neutral, used to harm or heal according to the character of the palero (the adherent of Palo Mayombe, an Afro-Cuban spiritual system originating among the Congolese).

We live by rules in our land, and the rules are exacting and many. Trials and wishes come in threes, glossy fruit should be avoided, frogs must never be kissed unless you are ready for a commitment, and princesses, at least the warbling kind, should be ever so mindful of their mood swings - it is sunny when we are cheerful, dreary when we are sad, and stormy when we are driven to consult heinous hags in furtive matters of maleficent magic.

In this sense, in precisely the same way as Canetti conceives vengeance, evil too is automatic. You cannot will it. That is an illusion and a misconception. The evil you can will, the evil you can do and which, most of the time, merges with violence, suffering and death, has nothing to do with this reversible form of evil. We might even say that those who deliberately practise evil certainly have no insight into it, since their act supposes the intentionality of a subject, whereas this reversibility of evil is the reversibility of a form. And it is, at bottom, the form itself that is intelligent, insightful: with evil it is not a question of an object to be understood; we are dealing with a form that understands us. In the 'intelligence of evil' we have to understand that it is evil that is intelligent, that it is it which thinks us - in the sense that it is implied automatically in every one of our acts. For it is not possible for any act whatever or any kind of talk not to have two sides to it; not to have a reverse side, and hence a dual existence. And this contrary to any finality or objective determination. This dual form is irreducible, indissociable from all existence. It is therefore pointless to wish to localize it and even more so to wish to denounce it. The denunciation of evil is still of the order of morality, of a moral evaluation. Now, evil is immoral, not in the way a crime is immoral, but in the way a form is. And the intelligence of evil itself is immoral - it does not aspire to any value judgement, it does not do evil, it speaks it. The idea of evil as a malign force, a maleficent agency, a deliberate perversion of the order of the world, is a deep-rooted superstition. It is echoed at the world level in the phantasmic projection of the Axis of Evil, and in the Manichaean struggle against that power. This is all part of the same imaginary. Hence the principle of the prevention, the forestalling, the prophylaxis, of evil; rather than morality or metaphysics, what we have today is an infection, a microbial epidemic, the corruption of a world whose predestined end is presumed to lie in good.