Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.

Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.

He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one.

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.

Sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

So let's not get frightened when the children read fantasy. It's the compost for a healthy mind. It stimulate s the inquisitive nodes, and there is some evidence that a rich internal fantasy life is as good and necessary for a child as healthy soil is for a plant, for much the same reasons.