“What is?', he said. 'What if?' is a question that belongs to magic.”

“If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done. ”

“I intended lilies, said the magician. but in the clutches of a desparate desire to do something extraordinary, I called down a greater magic and inadvertently caused you a profound harm. I will now try to undo what I have done.”

“Furlough?” He said.“What?” said the first hood irritably. Despereaux shuddered. His own brother was delivering him to the dungeon. His heart stopped beating and shrunk to a small, cold, disbelieving pebble.”

“Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl?The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.”

“And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.”

“[He] had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.”