he'd know that I think that . . . well, that bending an enemy's will through military force is the absolute last way a nation ought to go about solving their problems.

It’s so much easier to walk away than it is to have to explain to someone that you never want to see them again.

But I guess you would look beatific, too, if the man you had been in love with since the fifth grade had told you that he was in love with you, too.

It's only in fairy tales that princesses can afford to wait for the handsome prince to save them. In real life, they have to bust out of their own coffins and do the saving themselves.

She hadn't slain the dragon. Not at all. She hoped no one ever would.

It's what's known as an origin myth. What happened to me? That's no myth.

Back in middle school, Catherine and I had gone through this stage where all we would read were fantasy books. We'd consume them like M&M's, by the fistful, J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander. Susan Boone looked, to me, like the queen of the elves (there's almost always an elf queen in fantasy books). I mean, she was shorter than me and had on a strange lineny outfit in pale blues and greens.