Princesses Quotes

“Hold on to me!” Tedros yelled, hacking briars with his training sword.Dazed, Agatha clung to his chest as he withstood thorn lashes with moans of pain. Soon he had the upper hand and pulled Agatha from the Woods towards the spiked gates, which glowed in recognition and pulled apart, cleaving a narrow path for the two Evers. As the gates speared shut behind them,Agatha looked up at limping Tedros, crisscrossed with bloody scratches, blue shirt shredded away.
“Had a feeling Sophie was getting in through the Woods,” he panted, hauling her up into slashed arms before she could protest. “So Professor Dovey gave me permission to take some fairies and stakeout the outer gates. Should have known you’d be here trying to catch her yourself.”
Agatha gaped at him dumbly.
“Stupid idea for a princess to take on witches alone,” Tedros said, dripping sweat on her pink dress.
“Where is she?” Agatha croaked. “Is she safe?”
“Not a good idea for princesses to worry about witches either,” Tedros said, hands gripping her waist. Her stomach exploded with butterflies.
“Put me down,” she sputtered—
“More bad ideas from the princess.”
“Put me down!”Tedros obeyed and Agatha pulled away.
“I’m not a princess!” she snapped, fixing her collar.
“If you say so,” the prince said, eyes drifting downward.Agatha followed them to her gashed legs, waterfalls of brilliant blood. She saw blood blurring— Tedros smiled.
“One . . . two . . . three . . .”She fainted in his arms.
“Definitely a princess,” he said.”
― Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

“I don’t want to be a Princess,” she said finally. “You can’t make me be one.” She knew very well what became of Princesses, as Princesses often get books written about them. Either terrible things happened to them, such as kidnappings and curses and pricking fingers and getting poisoned and locked up in towers, or else they just waited around till the Prince finished with the story and got around to marrying her. Either way, September wanted nothing to do with Princessing.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.”
― George MacDonald, The Light Princess

“I believe in magic. In evil sorceresses who deep down are really beautiful princesses. I believe in immortals who live in a different world than this one, accessible by magical stone wheels.”
― Morgan Rhodes, Crystal Storm

“The least we each ought to do for someone who treats us like a king or a queen is to treat them like a prince or a princess.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A princess always takes care that her words are honeyed, for she may have to eat them”
― Christina Dodd, Some Enchanted Evening

“A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep.”
― Cinderella

“Rosabella Beauty was the daughter of the famous Beauty, a girl whose love had turned the Beast back into a prince. Darling Charming was the daughter of the renowned King Charming, whose royal storyline stretched back to the very beginning of stories. The Charming men had always been known for their heroic deeds, luxurious hair, and enchanting eyes. Darling's two brothers were expected to follow in King Charming's heroic footsteps by saving damsels, slaying dragons, and basically conquering whatever evil stepped into their paths.
Darling, however, was not a son. She was a daughter. And being a daughter was a different matter altogether. No heroic deeds were expected of her. No quests or adventures. While the activities of the Charming princes had always been celebrated by poets and storytellers, the Charming princesses had a singular destiny- to be damsels in distress waiting for rescue.”
― Suzanne Selfors, A Semi-Charming Kind of Life

“So was she on the side of dragons and indifferent to the fate of princesses?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“That's like a fairy-tale princess in a patrol car, huh? But hey, even, Disney princesses are toughening up these days. We're all capable of many things, right?”
― Heather Graham, Heart of Evil

“I thought it was a really good story,' Cindy said. She was trying to make me feel better, I think. 'I liked the way it ended. When I was halfway through, I was thinking that maybe some handsome prince was going to show up and save the princess.'

'She didn't need a handsome prince,' I said. 'Those wild girls did just fine on their own.”
― Pat Murphy, The Wild Girls

“Children are less easily frightened than we are.... they all understand princesses, of course. Haven't they all been badly bruised by peas?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“She had been called mi princesa hermosa, but the tales her mother had told weren't only about the pale blond ones locked in towers waiting for a prince to come. Janeta had heard tales of African princesses, brave and strong, fighting to protect their people.”
― Alyssa Cole, An Unconditional Freedom

“A prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice.”
― Machiavelli Niccolò, The Prince

“Return me safely to my home,” the princess said, “and I shall reward you with your weight in eggs.”
Olorun snorted derisively. “You’re joking, right?”
The woman’s eyes flitted in embarrassment.
“Now wait a minute,” said Helianthus. “We’re talkin’ eggs here. What sort of eggs? Ostrich eggs?”
Neferre made an impatient noise. “Hel! She doesn’t have any eggs! Unless they’re hidden in a very . . . delicate place.” Neferre grinned at the princess. “Tell me your eggs are hidden where I think they’re hidden.”
― Ash Gray, Time's Arrow

“97. I approached the symbol, with its layers of meaning, but when I touched it, it changed into only a beautiful princess.
98. I threw the beautiful princess headfirst down the mountain to my acquaintances.
99. Who could be relied upon to deal with her.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“I have a headache. If only I had a crown to put on!”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“That'll all be down to Snow's princessly training, Gretel supposes. Is one generally taught to handle a blade with utmost stealth and precision at princess school?”
― Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Darkwood

“When you're talking about over 26,000 items - and that's just Disney - it's a little hard to say where "want" ends and "coercion" begins.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

“It's as if the light changes color when Maraia and Madam Maya are together. I heard them singing this afternoon. Maraia's high-pitched voice, and Madam Maya's with deeper and looser tones. They sat on the floor with two brown and green pieces of fabric between them, which they had folded into the shape of small animals with bodies and heads. "We sing for the turtles," Maraia said. She must have told Madam Maya about the princesses Tinaicaboga and Raudalice, who were transformed into turtles when they were kidnapped by fishermen from a village on Kadavu. They found a way to escape, but they had to go on living as sea turtles in the bay off the island.
Maraia knew the song as well, the one the women in the princesses' village sing to them from the cliffs on the beach.

The women of Namuana are dressed for grief
They carry their holy clubs, decorated in strange patterns
Raudalice, come up and show yourself to us!
Tinaicaboga, come up and show yourself to us!

When the women sing, the giant turtles come up to the surface and listen.”
― Anne Østby, Pieces of Happiness

“She painted this one for me. We were playing ocean. Can't you see what it is?"
Two dark oval shapes in the middle of the page; hard, glittering shells. Two turtles stretching their heads toward the shore. The translucent sea above the flickering seabed. Brownish black mangrove trees against warm sand. The figures on the beach are tiny, with long, flowing hair. The song floats away from them, out over the ocean; in gold and lurid pink it strikes the dark shapes of the creatures in an extravagance of light.
"Those are the princesses," I say.
Maraia nods. "The big song is taking them up into the light.”
― Anne Østby, Pieces of Happiness

“As with all fairy tales, a crime was committed. In "Snow White," there was a poisoning. A hostage situation was at the heart of "Beauty and the Beast." "Hansel and Gretel" featured attempted cannibalism. "Cinderella" involved the lesser offense of party crashing. North Carolina began with a trespassing. Not a "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" domestic breaking and entering but an act of large-scale land grabbing.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“Because of my secret sense, I have always preferred the stories in the pages of books to those on the screen, but no matter the medium there seemed to be an overriding message: I was lucky to have a mother.
Rapunzel was taken away from her mother at birth. Her mother didn't even get to name her and probably wouldn't have chosen the name Rapunzel. Snow White and Gretel had stepmothers who plotted their violent deaths while Cinderella's own stepmother contemplated a slow death for her via the drudgery of housework and the crippling lack of a social life. Girls without their mothers were clearly at risk. Though in most of these stories, the girls eventually did find safety in marriage and lived happily ever after without bickering or marital strife.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“Girls without their fathers were also at risk. I didn't learn this from the fairy tales of my youth, because in those stories the fathers were present in the castles and in the cottages. The fairy-tale fathers, however, were unforgivably weak and always thinking with their groins. These men would rather sacrifice their daughters than risk harm to themselves. Rapunzel's father loved her mother so much that he stole for the woman. When he was caught, he was a coward, and instead of paying with his own life he promised away their unborn child. Gretel was very much alive, as was her brother, Hansel, when their father tried to do away with them. Three times he tried. ("Abandonment in the forest" was a bloodless euphemism for attempted murder.) Of course, there was Beauty. Was she not the poster child for daughters of men who dodged their responsibilities and used their female offspring as human shields?
Fairy-tale fathers were also criminally negligent. Where was Cinderella's father when she was being verbally abused and physically demeaned by her stepmother and stepsisters? Perhaps he was so besotted, his wits so dulled by his nightly copulation with his new wife, that he failed to notice the degraded condition of his daughter. Snow White's father, a king no less, was equally negligent and plainly without any power within his own domestic realm. Under his very roof, his new wife plotted the murder of his child, coerced one of his own huntsmen to carry out the deed, then ate what she thought was the girl's heart. This king was no king. He was a fool who left his daughter woefully unprotected.
When I first heard these stories, I assigned to these men no blame because they worry the solemn and adored mantle of "father." I understood them to be, like my own father, men who went to work every day, who returned home exhausted and taciturn, and who fell asleep in their easy chairs while reading the newspaper. I assumed that they, like my father, would have protected their daughters if only they had known of the dangers their girls faced during those dark hours after school and before dinner.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“I focus my attention on the cloth and I can breathe evenly again until the panic dissipates. There's a velvet blue-green, reminding me of the lake at dusk. I find an amazing, fantastical fabric embroidered with moths and butterflies and ferns and flowers. I lift it up, and underneath is a bolt of beautiful fog-gray cloth that ripples like smoke. They're so very pretty. The kind of fabrics that princesses in fairy tales wear.

Of course, Taryn is right about stories. Bad things happen to those princesses. They are pricked with thorns, poisoned by apples, married to their own fathers. They have their hands cut off and their brothers turned in to swans, their loves chopped up and planted in basil pots. They vomit up diamonds. When they walk, it feels as though they're walking on knives.

They still manage to look nice.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Princesses did not display curiosity. They waited. And waited. Until someone else decided the outcome of their lives for them.”
― Kenley Davidson, The Faceless Mage

“But then, that was what was expected of a princess. To wait, to trust, to allow others to fight for her. Except, in this case, Leisa wasn’t sure whether anyone else in this entire palace actually cared enough to do so.”
― Kenley Davidson, The Faceless Mage

“Princesses become queens, and there's never been a queen undeserving of burning.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Summer Children

“J.C. said, "Miss Doris, is all printhesses white?"

"How's that?"

"Is printhesses always white?"

"I ain't seen one recently. Last one I seen was black."

"Powther say they're white."

"Who's he?"

"My daddy."

"Well," Miss Doris said, "maybe your pappy's only seen white ones. Folks only see what they want to see.”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows

“I play with my sensations like a bored princess with her large, viciously agile cats.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet