Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

...no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.

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

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.

It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space--that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it.

Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.

What happened instead was that the tree fell in love with him and began to murmur fondly of the joy to be found in the eternal embrace of a red oak. "Always, always," it sighed, "faithful beyond any man's deserving. I will keep the color of your eyes when no other in the world remembers your name. There is no immortality but a tree's love.