A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.

The only water in the forest is the River.

The moonlight was enough. It would do.

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.

Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There's the magic of it.

All that I did," she said, "everything I tried to do. All for nothing." Nothing is done entirely for nothing, said the fox of dreams. Nothing is wasted. You are older, and you have made decisions, and you are not the fox you were yesterday. Take what you have learned, and move on.

That's the trouble with you young people. You think because you ain't been here long, you know everything. In my life I already forgot more than you ever know.