The first draft of a story is the writer’s clay.
I like fixing things,” he said as he worked. “The world is always breaking, here and there, this way and that. Fix a bit of it, and I feel like I’m helping.
Odds of a worm migration coming this way – about a billion to one. Odds of Elspeth improving her behavior without help – about the same. Sleep well, young friends.
If you don’t jump, the wings never come.
Gadfangled girl things, always robbed me of my common sense.
All these guys picking on smart kids and calling them geeks and dweebs are going to grow up and want to know why they don’t do something about the terrible state the world is in. I can tell you why. By the time they grow up, most of the kids who realy could have changed things are wrecked.
I am ignoring you. In fact, I think you are a figment of my imagination.
That sense of loss grew within the humans who had been left behind, left to live without unicorns. Even the ones who had never seen a unicorn, never heard of a unicorn, felt the passing of something sweet and wonderful. It was as if the air had surrendered a bit of its spice, the water a bit of its sparkle, the night a bit of its mystery.
Hearts grow hard and weary. Pain spreads, and joy diminishes. Those who hated you hate you still, but those who loved you, or would have loved you, or wanted to love you but never had the chance, are being scraped hollow by a loss they don’t understand. Come home. Please come home. We are withering without you.
Time becomes very weird. Sometimes it seems as if the hours are rushing by in a blur, the moment of performance hurtling toward me. Other times the clock seems to poke along like a sloth with chronic fatigue syndrome.
But, really, why does anyone create? You feel a... a restlessness inside, a need to make something new, something no one has ever seen before. You want to add to the beauty and the richness of the world with a gift, an offering that is uniquely yours. It’s an act of selfishness and generosity, all rolled into one.
Travel safe, travel well. May those who have gone before be always with you.
You need them both, Thatcher. Talent and discipline. One without the other is useless.
Change will come, whether we wish it to or not. To fight it is like fighting the sunrise. Better to say, ‘Ah, welcome old friend. Here you are again.
It is a pity that Earth has lost its dragons, for they added immeasurably to the strangeness of our world. This, it seemed to me, was a good thing.
Each wound has its own time for healing... The wounds of the heart are much deeper than those of the flesh.
But it’s often the case that our most intimate enemies are rooted in our own darkness.
For what kind of world is it that has no unicorns?
It is easy enough to reject a story because you do not like what it says, but wiser to examine it first, to see what can be learned from it.
Now that she had lived in two worlds, would she ever again be completely at home in either of them? Or would part of her always long for the other, no matter where she was?