“Sometimes, when I went to the spring to wash early in the morning," he murmured, "there'd be tiny fairies flitting around above the water, not much bigger than the butterflies you have here, and blue as violet petals. They liked to fly into my hair. Sometimes they spat in my face. They weren't very friendly, but they shone like glowworms by night. I sometimes caught one and put it in a jar. If I let it out at night before going to sleep I had wonderful dreams.""Capricorn said there were trolls and giants, too," said Meggie quietly.Dustfinger gave her a thoughtful look. "Yes, there were," he said. "But Capricorn wasn't particularly fond of them. He'd have liked to do away with them all. He had them hunted. He hunted anything that could run.""It must be a dangerous world." Meggie was trying to imagine it all: the giants, the trolls, and the fairies. Mo had once given her a book about fairies.Dustfinger shrugged. "Yes, it's dangerous, so what? This world's dangerous, too, isn't it?”

“What on earth have you packed in here? Bricks?" asked Mo as he carried Meggie's book-box out of the house.You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them," said Meggie.”

“This world,' she said. 'Do you really like it?'What a question! Farid never asked himself such things. He was glad to be with Dustfinger again and didn't mind where that was.It's a cruel world, don't you think?' Meggie went on. 'Mo often told me I forget how cruel it is too easily.'With his burned fingers, Farid stroke her fair hair. It shone even in the dark. 'They're all cruel,' he said. 'The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one, too. Maybe the people don't see the cruelty in your world right away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.”

“Yes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm around her as if he could really protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn't. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn't come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won't be able to find his way in again! He mustn't come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world.”

“Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!”

“It will be dark in a few hours," she said at last, anxiously. "Suppose you don't finnish it in time?" "I have finnished!" he snapped, irritated. "I've finnished a dozen times already, but I'm not happy with it." He lowered his voice to a wisper brfore he went on. "There are so many questions. Suppose the Shadow turns on you or me or the prisners once he's killed Capricorn? And is killing Capricorn really the only solution? What's going to happen to his men afterward? What do I do with them?" "What do you think? The Shadow must kill them all!" Meggie whispered back. "How else are we ever going to get back home or rescue my mother?" "Good heavens, what a heartless creature you are!" he wispered . "Kill them all! Haven't you seen how young some of them are?" He shook his head. "No! I'm not a mass murderer, I'm a writer! I'm sure I can think of some less bloodthirsty ending." And he began writing again . . . and crossing out words . . . and writing more, while outside the sun sank lower and lower until its rays were gliding the hilltops.”

“How well worn they all were..."Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said when, on Meggie's last birthday, they were looking at all her dear old books again. "As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower, both strange and familiar.”