But if you couldn't do everything, did that mean you did nothing?

Fantasy is, at its best, the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focus beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promises of the future.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

It is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.

most hated by the dark, for their name is light.