"Her mother had read them to her when she was little, and then she’d read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought, Where’s the evidence? The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about “a handsome prince”...was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for “a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long“...well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told…"