The Goose Girl Exploration Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

Ani opened the door to the smell of warm food mixed with the odor of cowsheds, breakfast bread, and bodies that spent too much time with animals and too little time in a bath. Ani wondered if she could eat through that smell, though the nearly three dozen workers at the table benches were eating as though half starving. (8.2)

This is not the type of exploration Ani wants to do, but it turns out it's good for her anyway. She figures out how to live without servants and so much stuff, and through the experience, she learns about what she really wants out of life.

Quote #8

"Poor gosling. It hurts to be lost. And worse to be home with no kind of homecoming. You're my good-luck bird, Jok . I'll be lucky if I can do as well as you when all this's done, just a bit out of breath, a bit bruised and scratched, a bit wiser and sadder for it all." (9.24)

Little Jok becomes Ani's companion in Bayern, but not until she learns the goose language first. In order for Ani to make new friends, she's first got to have some new experiences and push herself to do something different.

Quote #9

Ani had never before seen a sorcerer or heard a drum, and she lingered, mesmerized by the strokes of his hands and the beating of the drum that insisted itself into her heart's rhythm. Is it magic? She wondered. Or tricks? She watched the sorcerer transform a walnut inside his clenched fist into a scarf. She looked to the faces of the crowd around her and saw that they laughed where she had been in awe and grinned to see the rat become smoke and the child spit a coin from his mouth. I tell strange stories, she thought, and they marvel, but to them a sorcerer is nothing unexpected. (14.18)

Ani sees magic and wonders at the marketplace that she's never heard of before, let alone seen. While in Bayern, she gets to figure out about exciting and interesting things people do that are new to her—since she grew up sheltered in the palace, she's never explored a fair or seen magic, and now she gets to.