“If the witch understood the true meaning of sacrifice, she might have interpreted the Deep Magic differently, for when a willing victim who has committed no treachery, dies in a traitor’s stead, the stone table will crack and even death itself will turn backwards.”

“Oh, how interesting,” Lucy said. “What is the true meaning of sacrifice, Aslan?”

“It is an artificial anti-concept,” Aslan said in his low, golden voice. “It is the ultimate force of destruction. The very word self less suggests self-immolation, a complete annihilation of one’s own self for the sake of others. Sacrifice destroys knowledge, skill, talent, usefulness, all in the name of duty. It destroys love and self-esteem, which are the same thing. Self-sacrifice is an immoral nightmare.”

“I don’t quite understand,” Lucy said. “Does this mean Edmund is going to die instead of you?”

“Let us put it this way,” Aslan said. “If I exchange a penny for a dollar, have I made a sacrifice?”

The idea sets the detail. An idea, like a man, is alive; its integrity is to serve its own truth, its own single purpose. An idea cannot borrow hunks of its soul piecemeal any more than a man can borrow pieces of his body from another. The idea, and the Club, was mine. To say the four of us worked on it together is a form of truth, in the same way it is true to say that Homer and his pen-sharpener composed the Iliad.

“Us” is Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill, and me – Kristy Thomas. There cannot be an “us” without four “I”s, do you hear me? I have, let’s say, another sixty years to live, seventy if I husband my health carefully. Most of that time will be spent working. I have chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to a handful of decades of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards, and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. There have been no Baby-Sitters Clubs before like this one. There may never be another like it again.

I will be remembered as either a great man or a criminal. I shall leave it to others to do the remembering. Myself, I am content to act.

Kathleen: I started helping my mother after school here when I was six years old. And I used to watch her. And it wasn’t that she was just selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever it was (that) they were going to turn out to be. Because when you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.
Joe: Working, at six? How enterprising of you. What did she pay you?
Kathleen: What? No, I was…I just liked helping out around the store.
Joe: Helping? You performed basic tasks that ensured the store’s continued profitability and existence?
Kathleen: Well. I guess it was working. In a sense.
Joe: For free. You were enslaved, then.
Kathleen: I wouldn’t put it like that, exactly…
Joe: Tell me, did you ask your mother to give birth to you?
Kathleen: Of course not.
Joe: Then whence your moral obligation to provide her with unpaid labor?
Kathleen: I…I suppose there isn’t.
Joe: On what grounds did she have the right to demand free work from you?

Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are identical twins at Sweet Valley High. They’re both popular, smart, and gorgeous, but that’s where the similarity ends. Though they are twins, they are first and foremost individuals. Elizabeth is friendly, outgoing, and sincere—nothing like her twin, who knows better than to worry about pleasing others. Snobbish and conniving, Jessica thinks the whole world revolves around her. And most of the time it does, because she is a woman who knows how to translate her will into reality. Jessica always gets what she wants—at school, with friends, and especially with boys.

Do not make the same mistake as so many others have in Sweet Valley, the ignorant children who think that an individualist is someone who does as she pleases at everyone else’s expense. The expense of others doesn’t enter into it. An individual like Jessica recognizes that her rights matter only insofar as they do not trample on the rights of others. She will not run anyone else’s life, but neither will she let anyone else, from the highest Bruce Patman to the lowliest Winston Egbert, run hers. She neither rules (like Lila Fowler) nor is ruled (like Enid Rollins).