Marie Rutkoski

“Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.”

“In some ways, getting published in children's literature is a little more open than publishing adult literature. It's less hinged on who you might know.”

“She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.“Don’t wake up,” he said.”

“She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.”

“Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."Her words silenced him, steadied him.Antecipation lifted within her like the fragance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys. "Ready?"He smiled. "Play.”

“I was so in love with books from as early as I remember that it seemed a natural step to want to create them. And so I just wanted to be a writer from a very young age. And I think that the lies were just a natural side effect of me wanting to tell stories and write them down.”

“She said, I'm going to miss you when you when I wake up.Don't wake up, he answered.But he did.Kestrel, beside him on the grass, said. "Did I wake you? I didn't mean to."It took him a velvety moment to understand that this was real. The air was quiet. An insect beat it's clear wings. She brushed hair from his brow. Now he was very awake."You were sleeping so sweetly," she said."Dreaming" He touched her tender mouth."About what?""Come closer, and I will tell you."But he forgot. He kissed her, and became lost in the exquisite sensation of his skin becoming too tight for his body. He murmured other things instead. A secret, a want, a promise. A story, in its own way.She curled her fingers into the green earth”

“It was wrong to want to touch a scar and call it beautiful.”

“The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.”

“She said, I'm going to miss you when you when I wake up.Don't wake up, he answered.But he did.Kestrel, beside him on the grass, said. "Did I wake you? I didn't mean to.”

“There are certainly stories that I used to tell myself as a kid that did influence 'The Cabinet of Wonders.' There's a scene in the novel where there's a flood that bursts through the castle, and one of my favorite things to do when I was a kid at school was imagine what school would be like if there was a sudden flood.”

“She looked at the boy. He knew her weakness for storytelling. And it was, after all, only a story. Still, she wished he had chosen a happier one.”

“A strange feeling: as if filaments trailed from Arin's body. A thousand fishing lines snagging attention. Here and there. Little tugs. People caught on the lines. The way sometimes people couldn't look him in the eye, and when they did they become fish trying to breath air. He wished it weren't like that.He knew it would be necessary.”

“I love seeing a story evolve over several books and watching characters develop.”

“Any consideration of the story we call 'Cinderella' for simplicity's sake must acknowledge that 'Cinderella' has had a dizzying array of personae over hundreds of years, in several cultures. There is no one authoritative tale of 'Cinderella,' only a hall of mirrors with a different face in each reflection.”

“She remembered how her heart, so tight, like a scroll, had opened when Arin kissed her. It had unfurled. If her heart were truly a scroll, she could burn it. It would become a tunnel of flame, a handful of ash. The secrets she had written inside herself would be gone. No one would know”

“When you are 'world building,' people will oftentimes judge how well you built your world. They want to know: Is the culture believable? Does it feel like it has a history? I try very hard to pay attention to details.”

“My mother had been blind as a child. And so, blindness was something that has long fascinated me, but also it's something I find really, really scary.”

“I pretty much always wanted to write a series, because I love reading them.”

“He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasn’t time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin had been born in the year of the god of death, and he was finally glad of it. He surrendered himself to his god, who smiled and came close. Stories will get you killed, he murmured in Arin’s ear. Now, you just listen. Listen to me.”