“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.”

“The kiss was flight, the kind of kiss that had magic I hadn’t known existed. Or maybe it was the kind of kiss that I had known long before but had all but forgotten, like the scent of roses once they’re no longer in bloom.”

“How do I begin to explain? It’s because. Because I feel responsible. Because she’s a little girl with big green eyes that blink too often when she gets excited. Because she has this big dream about Florida, where she thinks she’ll find her mother, like the whole state is Disney World, nothing but palm trees and happiness. Because she misses her mother with a longing as big as the state. Because I’ve been blessed to have so much love in my life.”

“In my lifetime I have learned, among other things, not to overcookveal and never to forget a woman’s name the morning after. On that day Iadded another little ditty to my list: never blow up a dead whale withdynamite.”

“I made my promises in English and Anton did the same and even if the little priest understood not a word of it, we were given to know it was understood by God and that the union was made for better or worse, no matter what the tongue, for the language of the heart is spoken in all the corners of the earth.”

“Sometimes you have to work hard for what you want. Sometimes, hard work is what makes it precious.”

“After a childhood reading fairy tales and myths, is it any wonder that when I began to write my own stories I included fairy tales? Fairy tales are storytelling at its most basic. They’ve been with mankind for as long as people have told stories to each other. Fairy tales speak to something intrinsic in humans—they touch our most primitive selves. How else to explain that the Cinderella story is told in nearly every society on earth? To think of fairy tales as merely stories for children is to ignore thousands of years when fairy tales were used to teach morality, to warn, and to entertain both children and adults.”