“Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead”

“You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance.”

“People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.”

“The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told...”

“If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.”

“Stories don't care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself.”

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”