Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.

My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

A single, ordinary person still can make a difference - and single, ordinary people are doing precisely that every day.

I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better.

No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.