“What you look like and how great you are rarely go hand in hand. Otherwise, we’d have no trouble judging good men from bad, now would we?”

“It was an amazing garden like nothing Will had ever seen. Everything was covered in snow and glittering ice, the winding paths, the clusters of trees and what looked like mazes. And here and there blue fountains splashed and a river meandered between them, though the water didn’t look like water at all but like a stream of sapphires. And strangest of all was how see-through everything looked, trees showing through trees, the river showing through heaps of snow. It was all like a daydream, half imagination, half reality. But Will knew that it was real.”

“Christmas ribbons decked every crystal ball knocker on every sparkling door as far as the eye could see. Through the snowy streets of the Veiled Village, Echoes and Sounds rushed to and fro, their shimmering clothes looking like pouring rain or ice or waves. Before them multi-colored parcels fluttered like strange birds carried on small see-through wings, and every once in a while two parcels would collide and rain down gifts.”

“Echoes can’t read minds. But when you get to know someone very well, you can read their expressions. Pay attention. It will happen to you too.”

“It was a cold, bleak December morning in Alaska, a place so far north on planet Earth that if there were such things as popsicle people, they could live there quite comfortably.”

“I invite you to consider anew what you know and what you have; what you are here for and where you are going; and how you are going to do what you have come here to do. p 13”

“You were saying that the kind of man Robert wasis hard to find,” she said.Yes…it is.”I thought you were that kind of man?”Well…I am that man in the making.”Why do you think things are like that?”Society…you are right. Society has made the modern man promiscuous.”What? I thought you didn’t get my point.”I see your point now…it’s a very important point.”She smiled and allowed me to do the same. “A point that you are now using as anexcuse,” she said.I smiled, “what excuse?”That it’s all society’s fault.”No…oh…no,” I smiled again. “It’s not all society’s fault. We can also blamewomen.”What! Blame women for what?”For making it easier for men to be dogs.”Are you freaking me?”I wish I could but you won’t let me.”