“Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.”

“I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque des Reves, to know what they see and hear and feel. To see how their experience overlaps with my own and how it differs. I have been fortunate letters with such information, to have reveurs share with me writings from journals or thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper. We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared. -Friedrick Thiessen, 1895”

“And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.”

“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.”

“And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines.”

“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?”

“What happened?" Bailey asks."That is somewhat difficult to explain," Tsukiko answers. "It is a long and complicated story.""And you're not going to tell me, are you?"She tilts her head a bit ... "No, I am not," she says."Great," Bailey mutters under his breath... "The bonfire exploded? How?""Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.”