Son of a Witch (A Third Time)

My push to read the Wicked Years books before "Out of Oz" is released tomorrow continues with my third reading of "Son of a Witch" (329 pages) by Gregory Maguire. My first and second impressions of the novel can be found here and here. As with my third reading of "Wicked" I thought I would just relate some quotes I jotted down as I read through the novel:

"The Witch had locked him in the kitchen with Nanny and that jittery Lion. Showing surprising resourcefulness for one so dotty, Nanny had driven the handle of a one-egg iron skillet into the rotten wood of the doorjamb. Getting the idea, Liir and the Lion gouged at the hinges until the door fell heavily inward." In fact this is not how events went down in "Wicked." It was Nanny who had lock Liir and the Lion in the kitchen as the Witch dealt with Dorothy. A false recollection by Liir or a mistake by the author?

"His voice sounded soothing, even hypnotic, but the prisoner crouching against a back wall scooched her bare feet underneath her skirts. Shell's boots drew near until he was standing flush against her. She moaned or whimpered, and her feet curled the farther under her skirts. Mercy was hard to accept, Lirr guessed. Shell's feet rocked from toe to heel, with a comforting rhythm, and his heels began to lift from the floor." Shell, the future Emporor Apostle, bounder of opiates and rape.

"A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask."

"In Quadling thinking, one plus one doesn't equal a single unit of two. One plus one equals both."

"His other talent, though, was a distillation of memory into something rich and urgent. He guessed, in the hours or years remaining to him, he would remember the effect of Trism clearly, without corruption, as a secret pulse held in a pocket somewhere behind the heart."

"Still smeared with her birth blood, and the watery beginning of her little feces. He took her to the doorway and held her up in the warm rain. She cleaned up green."

Up next, "A Lion Among Men."