Didn't books say that too: that there is always price to pay for happiness?

Her curiosity was too much for her. She felt almost as if she could hear the books whispering on the other side of the half-open door. They were promising her a thousand unknown stories, a thousand doors into worlds she had never seen before.

Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.

Accursed, blasted, heartless things [books]! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!

Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.

Sometimes Dustfinger thought Basta's constant fear of curses and sudden disaster probably arose from his terror of the darkness within himself, which made him assume that the rest of the world must be exactly the same.

-You forgot something important! -What? -It's under my sweater! -WHAT?! -Me!