One of the secrets Martin must have learned down below the Northern Marsh was how not to care about some things, and there was power in that, the pow… - Lev Grossman

This was a double game: he was trying to save his childhood, to preserve it and trap it in amber, but to do that he was calling on things that partook of the world beyond childhood, whose touch would leave him even less innocent than he already was. What would that make him? Neither a child nor an adult, neither innocent nor wise. Perhaps that is what a monster is.

She wore a simple flowing white gown. So did everybody else. Gummidgy also wore a crown of mistletoe.
So your basic Golden Bough deal, Julia thought. Fucking mistletoe. She never saw what all the fuss was about. Sure, it’s pretty enough, but at the end of the day it’s still a botanical parasite that strangles its host.

Everybody has their own idiopathic reaction to their childhood home.