“Many times you will fail. That is the nature of the world, and the truth of life. But when you find your horse again, will go back or will you go forward?”

“Put one foot forward and the other will get you to where you are going~!" Bag Lady, Swan Song”

“Remember everything and anything. Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure. Because it is. and memories are sweet doors, Cory. They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something don't just look. See it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it too.”

“All life isn't hearts and flowers. But life is just as much pain and mess as it is joy and order, too. I guess when you make yourself realize that you.. .start growing up - Boy's Life”

“You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.That’s what I believe.The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.”

“Hold onto the magic of being a boy(...) once you lose it you are always begging to find it again.”

“We ran like young wild furies,where angels feared to tread.The woods were dark and deep.Before us demons fled.We checked Coke bottle bottomsto see how far was far.Our worlds of magic wonderwere never reached by car.We loved our dogs like brothers,our bikes like rocket ships.We were going to the stars,to Mars we'd make round trips.We swung on vines like Tarzan,and flashed Zorro's keen blade.We were James Bond in his Aston,we were Hercules unchained.We looked upon the futureand we saw a distant land,where our folks were always ageless,and time was shifting sand.We filled up life with living,with grins, scabbed knees, and noise.In glass I see an older man,but this book's for the boys.”