It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
It must be a dangerous world.” Meggie was trying to imagine it all: the giants, the trolls, and the fairies. Mo had once given her a book about fairies. Dustfinger shrugged. “Yes, it’s dangerous, so what? This world’s dangerous, too, isn’t it?
A wedding, a daughter in payment, and a white dress to hide all the bloody battlefields.
An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher or a magician – but the magician, the enchanter is in the ascendant.
Well, one thing’s for sure, they’re very strange names, and that’s putting it mildly.
It sounded as if his mother were breaking into small pieces, such tiny pieces that no one would ever be able to put her together again. But he wanted to keep her!
The Hartliebs had no time for the snow. Outside their window, San Giorgio Maggiore seemed to be floating on the lagoon as if it had just surfaced there. The view was so beautiful that Victor felt his heart ache. Esther and her husband, however, stood side by side with their backs to the window.
He simply didn’t see the world as it really was, that was the explanation – neither the world nor the people he felt so sorry for. Because if you did see them for what they were, what on earth would make you want to fight and even die for them?
Victor,” he asked, “what do adults do all day?” “Work,” Victor answered, “eat, shop, pay bills, use the phone, read newspapers, drink coffee, sleep.
Jealousy still gave him a pang. The heart was a stupid thing.
Do you remember the sound my heart made when it broke?
I don’t know much about killing, but for you I’d learn!
Have you forgotten?” she replied. “In our world, the Witches work in hospitals.
Love is a deadly affair.
The wrong boy. But what did the heart care about that?
Happy was not a word Nerron usually used to describe himself. It was, in his eyes, an emotional state only possible when paired with stupidity.
He had lived in Venice for more than fifteen years and he still didn’t know all the city’s nooks and crannies – but then again no one did.
Nonsense!” she shouted. “Where are you going to go? We all belong together. Your problems are our problems.
What nonsense! I just like to believe in fairy tales.
They have become so lost in their own darkness that they see nothing but darkness in everything.
We will never have the wealth of experience our immortal creators have. Yet I find comfort in the thought that this limited lifespan gives our minds, at times, refreshing freedom.