But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around-they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.

When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking.

I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.

I'm no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I'm pretty sure that's flirting

Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.

My portal to another world was fiction.

There was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret. Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.