But I must go on," said the Lady Amalthea, "for it is never finished. Even when I wake, I cannot tell what is real, and what I am dreaming as I move and speak and eat my dinner. I remember what cannot have happened, and forget something that is happening to me know. People look at me as though I should know them, and I do know them in the dream, and always the fire draws me nearer, though I am awake—

Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.

Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.

Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.

Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.

- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.

There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous.