What I Do Say Is That I

You Cannot Change What You Are, Only What You Do.

A Story, To Me, Has A Particular Sprite, Like The Angel Of The Spirit Of That Story - And It's My Job To Attend To What It Wants To Do. When I Tell The Story Of Cinderella, The Sprite Does Not Want Me To Make It Into An Allegory Of The Fall Of Communism. The Sprite Would Be Unhappy If I Did That.

There's A Hunger For Stories In All Of Us, Adults Too. We Need Stories So Much That We're Even Willing To Read Bad Books To Get Them, If The Good Books Won't Supply Them.

One Moment Several Things Are Possible, The Next Moment Only One Happens, And The Rest Don't Exist. Except That Other Worlds Have Sprung Into Being, On Which The Did Happen.

And Then Serafina Understood Something For Which The Witches Had No Word: It Was The Idea Of Pilgrimage. She Understood Why These Beings Would Wait For Thousands Of Years And Travel Vast Distances In Order To Be Close To Something Important, And How They Would Feel Differently For The Rest Of Time, Having Been Briefly In Its Presence. That Was How These Creatures Looked Now, These Beautiful Pilgrims Of Rarefied Light, Standing Around The Girl With The Dirty-face And The Tartan Skirt And The Boy With The Wounded Hand Who Was Frowning In His Sleep.