She closed her eyes. Said the four most comforting words she knew: "Once upon a time." An incantation.

What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.

The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings.

Oh my God!” Sam said again, his voice shaking. I’ve given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth.

Let us not dwell into past thoughts, worn out ideas, false beliefs. Let them go so that you can create a new self by emptying your mind and filling it with new thoughts, ideas, and visions.

I shudder to think of an eternity spend without books. I have hopes that every book that was ever lost is somewhere waiting for me when my life here finally ends.

Falsehoods not only disagree with truths but usually quarrel among themselves.

There's no reason to think that you'll be capable of loyalty to a diet until you address your basic disloyalty toward yourself.

There's always this assumption that you're going to get everything right immediately. And any professional understands that that's just not so.

A free-loader is a confirmed guest. He is the man who is always willing to come to dinner.

A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.

Let's sum up: an unknown number of enemies with unknown capabilities, supported by a gang of madmen, packs of attack animals, and superhumanly intelligent pocket change.

Education is very important to my parents and to me.

The two things we all want so desperately — glory and relationship — can coexist only with God.