“Kiran says (the shelf) is full of stories. If it is, then I like fairy stories. Fairy stories are fair. In them wishes are granted, words are enchanted, the honest and brave make it safely through to the last page and the baddies either have to give up their wickedness for ever and ever, no going back, or get ruthlessly written out of the story, which they hardly ever survive. Also in fairy stories there are hardly any of those half-good half-bad people that crop up so constantly in real life and are so difficult to believe in...”

“This isn’t a nice story, and this isn’t an easy story. But it is a story about fairies, so feel free to think of it as a fairy story. It’s not like you’d believe it anyway.”

“Besides, she likes my stories. They are like fairy tales, I suppose, full of kings and queens and adventures. Ma says people think fairy tales are simple stories but they are not. I guess I agree. My trouble is I have no talent for thinking up plots. The best I can do is come up with a good beginning. My book of story ideas is really just a book of story beginnings. Still and all, that is something.”

“Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood.”

“There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.”

“I’d believed in that story, the story of us. It was still there,that antiquated fairy tale notion. I was older now, though, and it wastime to let the fairy tale go.”