How we cite our quotes: Chapter.Paragraph
Quote #1
"It's not that," Becca said, trying to explain. "I mean, it's not that I believe it. Or even that she does. It's like the story is…like a metaphor…." (2.57)
Becca, who always understood Gemma best, understands that her grandmother is trying to communicate something important with her Briar Rose fixation. Helpful hint: the phrase "like a metaphor" will get you bonus points in English class.
Quote #2
Gemma's story never ended happily ever after except for the princess Briar Rose and her own little girl. There had always been something decidedly odd about the whole telling. Only now was Becca able to admit it. (6.17)
Have you ever had that experience where you realize that something you that you never thought to question when you were a kid was actually totally, totally weird? Well, that's what Becca's figuring out here.
Quote #3
"When Briar Rose was seventeen, one day and without further warning…a mist covered the entire kingdom.…And everyone in it—the good people and the not-so-good, the young people and the not-so-young, and even Briar Rose's mother and father fell asleep." (7.14, 7.16, and 7.18)
By now you know that Gemma's story was an allegory for what happened to her during the war. "Translate" this passage.
Quote #4
"She always spoke of her past as if it were a fairy tale." (8.64)
Gemma turned a terrible episode in her history into a bedtime story for children. It was important for her to share it, even if the real details were unspeakable. Well, that's one kind of coping mechanism.
Quote #5
"Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths." (10.35)
Whoa, Stan is getting all deep on us here. So deep he's a little bit husky. How does the idea that a lie can hide the deepest truth apply to Gemma?
Quote #6
"Fairy tales always have a happy ending." He leaned back in his chair. "That depends." "On what?" "On whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen." (16.68-16.71)
Stan again, who loves nothing more than to pontificate on storytelling. What he's saying here is true, though: every story has at least two sides.
Quote #7
And without further introduction, he began the promised story, telling it with a practiced economy, as if he were only a storyteller and not one of the main characters. (23.67)
It sounds like Josef had mad storytelling skills. How are his techniques different from Gemma's? How are they the same?
Quote #8
And he understood, then, that the point of their raid was not to blow anything up at all. The point was to die so that they, in turn, could become stories for other partisans to tell around the fires that were not fires. (27.33)
Did Josef's comrades want to die so they would be the heroes in other people's stories? Or did they want to truly inspire other people participating in the war effort? Is either one a good reason to go on what's basically a suicide mission? Explain your answer.
Quote #9
He was never to know whether that story was, like all her stories told to him late at night, a fairy tale or real. (28.7)
In Briar Rose, the line between real life and imagination is often very thin. Food for thought, eh?
Quote #10
The girl had stopped moving, had even stopped breathing. Josef could feel her die in his arms. So he laid her down on the ground and, putting his mouth on hers, the taste of vomit bitter on his lips, he tried to give her breath. (29.68)
This is the famous "kiss" from the prince in Gemma's fairy tale. Sometimes real life doesn't quite have the romance the story does.