“Fictions are merely frozen dreams, linked images with some semblance of structure. They are not to be trusted, no more than the people who create them.”

“How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad!”

“Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.”

“A spiritual organization with a hierarchical structure can convey only the consciousness of estrangement, regardless of what teachings or deep inspirations are at its root.The structure itself reinforces the idea that some people are inherently more worthy than others.”

“Five Great Charters knit the landTogether linked, hand in handOne in the people who wear the crownTwo in the folk who keep the Dead downThree and Five became stone and mortarFour sees all in frozen water.”

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”