{"author":"Anne Ursu","author_id":"Anne+Ursu","total_quotes":20,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["good-and-evil","world"],"id":8116,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"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.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["death","expectations","grief","loss"],"id":16472,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["moving-on"],"id":18091,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"She did not like seeing her loved ones like this, bent over with sorrow; everything in her wanted to cry out, to thrash and scream at the sight of it. But she knew that great grief came from great love, and that their grief was an honor to her. And she did love them so very much.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["grief","loss","love"],"id":53833,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"Hugging himself, Oscar leaned against the pantry wall. For two days all he had wanted was for Caleb to come back, and now he was back and Oscar had made a mess of things: he had angered half the customers and confused the other half, and the coin boxes did not look as they should, and [rich, noble] people were complaining about him, and he couldn't look at anybody, and [redacted] was dead, and Oscar was odd.'What if he doesn't keep me?","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["abandonment","awkward","failure","fear","rejection"],"id":92840,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and shift underneath it. And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people—a great many people—who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes. But we know better.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["world"],"id":117939,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"There are ways to do things, ways to act with people, and I do not understand them. I cannot understand what people mean when they talk. I do not do things right. I do not feel things right. I do not see things right. I am not...I'm not made of the same thing as everyone else.'The baker took in a deep breath. '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.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["being-normal","self-doubt","self-worth","social-cues"],"id":165637,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["people"],"id":178087,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"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.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["children","shadow"],"id":201733,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"},{"text":"This was not [him]. It was a thing, with all the [him]-ness gone from it. Death takes the person and leaves his shell behind, like a hollowed-out tree.","author":"Anne Ursu","tags":["death","emptiness","grief","shock"],"id":213165,"author_id":"Anne+Ursu"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":20,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}