Liesl Shurtliff Quotes & Sayings

Rumpel. Stiltskin. I heard Mother's whisper reaching across years and mountains and valleys. Rumpel. Stiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin. The name, my name, shook in my chest. It traveled through my brain and down my arms and fingertips to my legs and toes. The sound of it echoed so loud inside of me I felt I would burst. — Liesl Shurtliff

Just as people laugh at a name like Rump, they fear a name like Red. Red is not a name. It's a color, an evil color. What kind of destiny does that bring? — Liesl Shurtliff

Home is a place to get out of the rain
It cradles the hurt and mends the pain
And no one cares about your name
Or the height of your head
Or the size of your brain — Liesl Shurtliff

All magic has consequences, Rump. Even small magic can have big consequences. — Liesl Shurtliff

Names are powerful and so is destiny, but a person's will is more powerful than both put together. — Liesl Shurtliff

Simple needs make a simple life. — Liesl Shurtliff

A name is a powerful thing. — Liesl Shurtliff

A stiltskin is magic at its greatest. Pure magic, un-meddled-with and more powerful than any enchantment or spell. — Liesl Shurtliff

It's difficult to tell how much time is really passing when you're hungry and bored. — Liesl Shurtliff

Martha spouted off a long message to the gnome, including all the details of my injuries, precisely where I was, and who Martha was and her son Helmut. When she asked the gnome to repeat the message, he got it all mixed up, and so she did it again and made it longer, but he still got it all mixed up, and so they went back and forth, and finally Martha lost patience and threw him out the window. The gnome scurried away chanting, Red for message! Red for message! — Liesl Shurtliff

King Barf isn't actually named King Barf. His real name is King Bartholomew Archibald Reginald Fife, a fine, kingly name - a name with a great destiny, of course. But I don't care how handsome or powerful that name makes you. It's a mouthful. So for short I call him King Barf, though I'd never say it out loud. — Liesl Shurtliff

I woke with my name singing in my ears. It was a beautiful sound, music unlike any in the world. It made me wish that everything could have such a name. Not just people, but animals and villages, and roads and kingdoms, even mountains. — Liesl Shurtliff

Maybe destiny isn't something that just happens. Maybe destiny is something you do. Maybe destiny is like a seed and it grows. — Liesl Shurtliff

Life is like a story. It doesn't mean anything if it doesn't end. — Liesl Shurtliff

Sometimes we have to fall down before we can stand up. — Liesl Shurtliff

It's hard not to feel guilty when starving people bring you food. — Liesl Shurtliff

Life would be awfully grim and glum if I couldn't laugh at myself. — Liesl Shurtliff

They say that a minute is a minute no matter where you are or what you're doing, but my brain could never grasp that. I think time is a trickster. When I have a lot to do, time shrinks, but when I want something over with, it stretches and yawns, and laughs at my torture. Sometimes the minutes hold hours inside of them. — Liesl Shurtliff

What's that?"
"He just fell from that tower!"
"Is he dead?"
"He's alive, I think."
Someone bent over me. "Are you alive?"
"I'm alive," I said breathlessly, "and I'm going to have a baby."
"What did he just say?"
"Something about a baby."
"A baby." I said, and then I blacked out. — Liesl Shurtliff

Rhymes make me feel better when I'm down ... When you say the words and the sounds match, it feels like everything in the world is in its place and whatever you say is powerful and true. — Liesl Shurtliff

It's all the things in the middle that make a person special. — Liesl Shurtliff

Funny, that we always told stories with wolves and beasts and demons as villains, but in real life it seemed the humans were always the worst enemies. You could be your own villain. — Liesl Shurtliff

And that's its own kind of magic - to feel that people who are gone are still here. — Liesl Shurtliff

I didn't think meanness was ever in anyone's destiny. Meanness was a choice. — Liesl Shurtliff

Who was the monster, here? — Liesl Shurtliff