Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

And you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you've ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry.

I know that the whole point—the only point—is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a liar?

Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.