“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?”

“Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep overlapping and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there in no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”

“I suggest you keep your distance from her and concentrate on your own work.” “I’m in love with her.”“I am sorry to hear that,” he says. “It will make the challenge a great deal more difficult for you.”“We have been playing at this for more than a decade, when does it end?”“It ends when there is a victor.”

“There are no more battles between good and evil, no more monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens areare perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience,at least the ones worth anything in any case.”

“We cannot go backward,' Marco says. 'A great deal is not how it used to be.”

“Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.”

“Taking his time, as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly."The circus arrives without warning.”