And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.

And she sees that the moonlight is losing its orange glow. It has become buttery, and will soon turn to silver.

That's not such a bad thing,' he said to me. 'In nightmares we can think the worst. That's what they're for, I guess.

Formula: Second Draft = First Draft minus 10%.

A child blind from birth doesn't even know he's blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thing. Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but. If the condition had been new, or more localized, he might have understood, but loneliness both encompassed his life and overreached it.