Top 40 Anne Ursu Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “In woods where the woodsmen told lies, maybe it was the wolves who told the truth.”

— Anne Ursu

2. “A boy got a splinter in his eye, and his heart turned cold. Only two people noticed. One was a witch, and she took him for her own. The other was his best friend. And she went after him in ill-considered shoes, brave and completely unprepared.”

— Anne Ursu

3. “Kids can handle a lot more than you think they can. It’s when they get to be grown up that you have to start worrying.”

— Anne Ursu

4. “If shadows were caused by the interplay between light and Life, a child’s was still forming. An adult’s was inextricably bound to his body, but a child had a tenuous relationship to his own permanence, and thus, his own shadow.”

— Anne Ursu

5. “Her father said she was a princess. He did not see that she was a brave knight.”

— Anne Ursu

6. “She understood. They were plastic flowers of words – but they looked nice on the surface.”

— Anne Ursu

7. “She’d been to Narnia, Wonderland, Hogwarts, Dictionopolis. She had tessered, fallen through the rabbit hole, crossed the ice bridge into the unknown world beyond.”

— Anne Ursu

8. “Fiercely original and uncommonly lovely, The Witch’s Boy is equal parts enchanting and haunting. Kelly Barnhill is master of truly potent and unruly magic; luckily for readers, she chooses to use her powers for good.”

— Anne Ursu

9. “The house felt strange. Altered. Like someone had come in during the day and shrunk all the furniture just a tiny bit.”

— Anne Ursu

10. “This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.”

— Anne Ursu

11. “It snowed right before Jack stopped talking to Hazel, fluffy white flakes big enough to show their crystal architecture, like perfect geometric poems.”

— Anne Ursu

12. “Sometimes superheroes are born, sometimes they are made. Sometimes they make themselves. Sometimes all it takes is will.”

— Anne Ursu

13. “I believe that the world isn’t always what we can see,” he said. “I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out.” He gave Hazel a serious look. “So, if someone’s changed overnight – by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle – you have to show them what’s good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn’t save them, they’re not worth saving.”

— Anne Ursu

14. “At each step there is a small moment of transformation that cannot be overlooked or rushed. And these moments should not be, because they are beautiful.”

— Anne Ursu

15. “I think if you’ll look around, my boy,′ he said gently, ’you’ll find that no one is quite right. But we all do the best we can.”

— Anne Ursu

16. “He’s gone now. He did something terrible, but... he did good things, too. And he kept us well. And it’s all right if you are sad.”

— Anne Ursu

17. “But if you were Charlotte, and you had been feeling that life was some cosmic joke that had no punchline, and in the space of a moment you had gone from being Charlotte-without-a-kitten to being Charlotte-with-a-kitten, you too would have found it nothing short of remarkable.”

— Anne Ursu

18. “She had believed that because someone needed saving they were savable.”

— Anne Ursu

19. “It was a beautiful lie that they had all been telling themselves – that you could have magic without monsters.”

— Anne Ursu

20. “Oscar did not know what he was supposed to be feeling right now, what all the adults behind him would be expecting him to feel. He did not even know what he was, in fact, feeling. Except, whatever it was, it was a lot. Too much. More than bodies could hold.”

— Anne Ursu

21. “The halls were empty. Charlotte had missed the first bell and would be late, again. Her homeroom teacher would ask her for an excuse and she would say, ‘Overwhelming feeling of dread.’ That was going to go over nicely.”

— Anne Ursu

22. “There is something in the magic we have that is greater than the magic we can do.”

— Anne Ursu

23. “They said words they did not mean, and their conversations seemed to follow all kinds of rules – rules that no one has ever explained to Oscar.”

— Anne Ursu

24. “She didn’t know the answer. But there had to be a way. There was always a way.”

— Anne Ursu

25. “How she hated the weakness of her human heart.”

— Anne Ursu

26. “She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way.”

— Anne Ursu

27. “The boys wouldn’t come to save him. Only Hazel would. And maybe that’s why the boys would win.”

— Anne Ursu

28. “The apprentice’s name was Wolf, because sometimes the universe is an unsubtle place.”

— Anne Ursu

29. “His words sounded foolish to his own ears. He was not impressive. He was small like the world.”

— Anne Ursu

30. “The Asterians didn’t call themselves anything special, because when everyone else refers to you as the shining people, you really don’t have to do it yourself.”

— Anne Ursu

31. “He could still escape – the fear was in front of him, and all he had to do was wrench free and run in the other direction. But he kept walking forward, straight into its embrace.”

— Anne Ursu

32. “He lifted his hand to knock, but then he stopped. He could go neither forward nor back, so he simply stayed that way – hand frozen in the air.”

— Anne Ursu

33. “Someone who thinks of possessing a fountain made of a winged baby with water shooting out of its mouth must not have too many troubles.”

— Anne Ursu

34. “She’d read once that if you ran into a bear in the woods you should avoid eye contact and you shouldn’t run away, but all she knew about wolves is that you should never tell them how to find your grandmother’s house.”

— Anne Ursu

35. “He squeezed Steve’s shoulder possessively. “Oh, Zero. He is not you, I must admit. He does not have your bravery, your nobility, your je ne sais quoi, and all he talks about is this magical place called ‘Canada’.”

— Anne Ursu

36. “No one else needed to do this. No one else needed lessons on how to be a person.”

— Anne Ursu

37. “Ladders were not inherently dangerous, he told himself, people climbed them every day, and most of them lived.”

— Anne Ursu

38. “The words kept coming and he could not stop them, not while Callie was standing there so indecipherably, and so he was going to keep talking until he used up all the words there were and then no one would be able to talk to anyone else anymore and then all anyone would have left were one another’s unintelligible faces, and maybe some weird gesturing, too, and it would be all Oscar’s fault.”

— Anne Ursu

39. “That was the point where she was supposed to sound tough, like she was someone to be reckoned with, like she was the sort of person witches should listen to. Was this really her plan? She sounded like a child.”

— Anne Ursu

40. “This morning, as Charlotte approached the brick facade of Hartnett, she found herself overcome with a great sense of dread. It hit her with a strange and sudden force, and she had an overwhelming urge to turn back, get into bed and not go out for about three weeks. She stopped in her tracks. The feeling itself was alarming to Charlotte – was she sensing something? Something dangerous? And was it something supernatural or just middle school? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.”

— Anne Ursu

41. “Hazel shrugged. She heard Bobby’s voice in her head and wondered why it was she who was not allowed to hurt anyone.”

— Anne Ursu

42. “The ground beneath our feet is home to more untapped wonder than the skies above our head.”

— Anne Ursu

43. “There are differences between facts and truths. Facts are something you now in your brain; truths are things you know in your heart.”

— Anne Ursu