“Though [Wizard Howl] did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them.”
“Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet – Wanted for spreading vicious rumors – If you see them, report to mayor’s chief guard. Believe nothing they say. Reward.”
“The point was, there didn’t need to be an answer because he wasn’t going to be president. Trump’s longtime friend Roger Ailes liked to say that if you wanted a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network.”
″For Jessica, it was easier to think of me as Bad Hannah than as the Hannah she got to know at Monet’s. It was easier to accept. Easier to understand.
For her, the rumors needed to be true.”
“Anyway, when he was in about Form One, some stupid fool started a rumor that Simon had AIDS, and that’s why he was sick. Next thing you know, some parents wouldn’t let their kids play with Simon, in case they caught something from him.”
“When your body takes up more room than your voice you are always the target of well-aimed rumors, which is why I let my knuckles talk for me. Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.”
“Everyone had a story about a family member who’d had to go in to hiding, or a friend who’d been dragged off to a concentration camp, or a house that had been destroyed by a bomb. Then they moved on to rumours about the war- about Patton, the American general who was making such good progress on the Western Front...”
Soon the rumors fly that the Painter committed suicide, and Claudio’s grief gets tangled up with his confusion. Written with remarkable, sustained intensity, this novel tells how Claudio slowly sorts though his intense feelings and comes to an uneasy peace with the fact of his friend’s death.
“The story beings in the spring of 1863, when rumors arose that there was going to be gold in the Black Hills (Lakota: Paha Sapa). The eleven-year-old Harka emulates his father, the war chief of the bear gang, Mattotaupa (“Four Bears”).”