...I dabble in causes and effects.

It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived-- a hot-air balloon-- just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial.

I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.

The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief.

Don't wish,"said Rain, "don't start. Wishing only...

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.