Stardust

it was a deceptive blankness, the blankness of a rock face that one only realizes cannot be climbed when one is halfway up, and there is no longer any way down

“How d’you like your baths?” she asked, solicitously, “warm, hot, or boil-a-lobster?”

“You are young, and in love,” said Primus. “Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.”

“I am the most miserable person who ever lived,” he said to the Lord Primus, when they stopped to feed the horses feedbags of damp oats.
“You are young, and in love,” said Primus. “Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.”

(Fairy Tales, as G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, are not true. They are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.)

Cupid and Psyche is retold and half forgotten and remembered again and becomes Beauty and the Beast

Once upon a time, Orpheus brought Eurydice back alive from Hades. But that is not the version of the tale that has survived.

(Fairy Tales, as G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, are not true. They are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.)

The imagination is a dangerous place, after all, and you can always use a guide to the territory.

Even if you never got to be a werewolf when you grew up

Cupid and Psyche is retold and half forgotten and remembered again and becomes Beauty and the Beast.

When I grew up, I wanted to be a werewolf. Or a writer. But writer was definitely the number two alternative. Werewolfing was an easy number one