I'm never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated . . .

No." Mosca bit her lip and shook her head firmly. Books no longer seemed quite enough. I don’t want a happy ending, I want more story.

Every time I do what you say I tumble a bit farther down this well of darkness, an' this here is a drop too deep an' too dark for me. I have to stop falling while I can still see a bit of the sky.

My good lady,’ interrupted Clent, ‘are you telling me that he is not the Luck? That you have in some way obfuscated the chronology of his nativity?’ Seconds passed. A beetle flew into Mistress Leap’s hair while she stared at Clent, then it struggled free and flew off again. ‘Did you lie about when he was born?’ translated Mosca.

Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.

My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.

Tips for aspiring writers: don't be afraid of writing rubbish. It's very easy to become hypnotised by an empty page or screen. It's tempting to abandon a half-finished work because you can't make it perfect. I hereby give you permission to write things that aren't perfect, make mistakes, try things that don't work, experiment with styles you're not used to and generally throw words around. You'll learn much faster that way.