Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.

A poem doesn’t come out and tell you what it has to say. It circles back on itself, eating its own tail and making you guess what it means.

People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture. That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.

It wasn't quite a question. It was more of an invitation to tell him whatever I chose. Eldric game me a choice, and it was this that made me want to tell him everything.