“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.”

“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.”

“So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”

“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...”

“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.”