From The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

"I looked at Lettie in the moonlight.

'Is that how it is for you?' I asked.

'Is what how it is for me?'

'Do you still know everything all the time?'

She shook her head. She didn't smile. She said, 'Be boring knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here.'

'So you used to know everything?'

She wrinkled her nose. 'Everybody did. I told you it's nothing special knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play.'

'To play what?'

'This.' she said.

She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and shoals and clusters of bright stars.

I wished I knew what she meant. It was as if she was talking about a dream we had shared. For a moment, it was so close in my mind that I could almost touch it."

From Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

"Dootsie looked at me, at him. 'Is Grace your wife who died?' He nodded. She said, 'I'll be sad with you, Charlie.' She climbed onto his lap and hugged him. He closed his eyes and stroked her hair. I stared at the tombstone."

"You're cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you're stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today that you wasted is gone forever. It's now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you'll never know."

"There's nothing sadder than a sobbing waffle."

"It was a small, surprising sense of disappointment even as he was kissing me, but the violins were so loud that at the time I could hear nothing else. Now that disappointment was returning, and with it the realization that the magic had come only from the moment, not from him. It was different with you, Leo. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same. The setting never mattered. On the sidewalk in front of my house, at the enchanted place in the dessert, walking the halls at school--wherever I was with you, I heard violins."

"We Arnolds, our hearts yearn backward. We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home. But I no longer hope to be found, Leo. Do not follow me! Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. you be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!"

From Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

"Head and heart are contrary to historians."

"The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then--maybe--the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper."

"As I went about my day, I felt her going about hers. I sensed her movement, her presence in distant parts of the building. Walking the halls between classes, I didn't have to see her, I knew she was there: unseen in the mov heading my way, about to turn a corner five classroom doors down. I homed in on the beacon of her smile. As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars."

"He pointed the pipe stem at me. 'You know, there's a place we all inhabit, but we don't much think about it, we're scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day.' 'What's that?' I said. 'It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...' He pulled out his pouch and repacked his pipe. Cherryscent flew. He struck a match. The pipe bowl, like some predator, or seducer, drew down the flame. '...and then--ah--we open our eyes and the day is before us, and'--he snapped his fingers--'we become ourselves.'"

From Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

"The point is that you <i>are</i> an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That's concrete individuality: an individuality that recognizes that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individuals, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly."

"Lin felt a familiar melancholy affection for him. Melancholy at his self-sufficiency in these moments of fascination; affection for his fervour and passion."

From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

"His changes of mood did not offend me, because I saw that I had nothing to do with their alteration; the ebb and flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me."

"And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No,reader: gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so [...]."

"I pronounced judgment to this effect: That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar." I love this whole section where Jane is berating herself. I feel like I, along with probably most women, have had this conversation with myself.

"There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort."

"I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol."

"You are not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited me [...]: and I longed vainly."

"And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame."

"As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own."

"My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him."

"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down."

"A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses--fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty--warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter--by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead." GAH!

From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

"True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring--once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome...except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners. And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous."

From The Wastelands by Stephen King

"Eddie stuck out his lower lip and blew hair off his forehead." Reminded me of Andrew. He had a habit of doing this.

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams

"'Maybe. Who cares?' said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. 'Perhaps I'm old and tired,' he continued, 'but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway.'"

From Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

"What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find. [...] When someone is seeking [...] it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving toward your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose."

"Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish."

"No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evoving along a long pat to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people--eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see har far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin."

"Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish."

"And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."

From Korzybski, Polish-American Linguist

"There are two ways to slice easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."

From Plato

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

From Mahatma Gandhi

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

From the Movie Adaptation

"You are what you love. Not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago."

From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

"'Very true,' said the Duchess: 'flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is-' 'Birds of a feather flock together.'"

From The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic."

"He didn't know, of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. 'I know,' he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did."

From Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

"How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them."

From The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

"When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that."

"I wanted to feel Luke lying beside me. I have them, these attacks of the past, like faintness, a wave sweeping over my head. Sometimes it can harly be borne. What is to be done, what is to be done, I thought. There is nothing to be done."

"But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest."

"I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I'm talking to a wall. I wish You'd answer. I feel so alone."

"I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was."

From Mort by Terry Pratchett

"Albert grunted. 'Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?' Mort thought for a moment. 'No,' he said eventually, 'what?' There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, 'Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right."

"Cutwell pushed back his hood with an annoyed flourish. Instead of the gray-bearded mystic Mort had expected, he saw a round, rather plump face, pink and white like a pork pie, which it somewhat resembled in other respects. For example, like most pork pies, it didn't have a beard and, like most pork pies, it looked basically good-humored."

"Mort was already aware that love made you hot and cold and cruel and weak, but he hadn't realized that it could make you stupid."

"There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollection you'd rally rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short."

"There should be a word for the microscopic spark of hope that you dare not entertain in case the mere act of acknowledging it will cause it to vanish, like trying to look at a photon. You can only sidle up to it, looking past it, walking past it, waiting for it to get big enough to face the world."

From The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay

"She grieved in her heart for the sins of good men, caught in a dark world, longing for light."-Kim reflecting on Matt Soren leaving Calor Diman and on Arthur slaying the children

"If only she had loved me! I might have shone so bright!" -Galadan finally grieving over Lisen.

"We are not slaves to the Loom, not bound forever to our fate." -Paul to Arthur.

From Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

"Her heart was almost broke by such a picture of what she appeared to him; by such accusations, so heavy, so multiplied, so rising in dreadful gradation! Self-willed, obstinate, selfish, and ungrateful. He thought her all this. She had deceived his expectations, she had lost his good opinion. What was to become of her?"

"He began to be agreeable to her. She felt it to be so, though she had not foreseen and could hardly understand it; for he was not pleasant by any common rule, he talked no nonsense, he paid no compliments, his opinions were unbending, his attention tranquil and simple. There was a charm, perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity."

"How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind! [...] If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient - at others, so bewildered and so weak - and at others again, so tyrannic so beyond controul! - We are to be sure a miracle every way - but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out." -Fanny to Miss Crawford while walking in the shrubbery

"She would learn to match him in his indifference. She would henceforth admit his attentions without any idea beyond immediate amusement. If he could so command his affections, her's should do her no harm." Miss Crawford on thinking of Edmund

"'It can be but a fortnight,' said Henry, 'and if a fortnight can kill her, she must have a constitution which nothing could save. No, I will not do her any harm, dear little soul! I only want her to look kindly on me, to give me smiles as well as blushes, to keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away that she shall be never happy again. I want nothing more.'" -Henry Crawford devising his plan to win over Fanny...what an ass

"Fanny's attractions increased - increased two-fold - for the sensibility which beautified her complexion and illumined her countenance, was an attraction in itself. he was no longer in doubt of the capabilities of her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young, unsophisticated mind! she interested him more than he had foreseen. A fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite." -Henry Crawford's thoughts on Fanny

"'Well,' said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant answers - 'I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly your opinion of me. You think me unsteady - easily swayed by the whim of the moment - easily tempted - easily put aside. With such an opinion, no wonder that -- but we shall see. - It is not by protestations that I shall endeavor to convince you I am wronged, it is not by telling you that my affections are steady. my conduct shall speak for me - absence, distance, time shall speak for me. - They shall prove, that as far as you can be deserved by any body, i do deserve you. - You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature..."

"I am afraid we think too differently, for me to find any relief in talking of what I feel." -Fanny to Edward regarding Henry Crawford

"'We are so totally unlike,' said Fanny, avoiding a direct answer, 'we are so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together, even if I could like him. There never were two people more dissimilar. We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable.' '[. . .] You forget yourself: there is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow. he is lively, you are serious; but so much the better; his spirits will support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected, and to fancy difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness will counteract this. he sees difficulties no where; and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support to you. Your being so far unlike, fanny, does not in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness together: do not imagine it. I am myself convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance. I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike; I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay. Some opposition here is, I am thproughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happiness.'" -Fanny and Edward speaking of Mr. Crawford

"I dare say I was not reasonable in carrying with me hopes of an intercourse at all like that of Mansfield. it was her manner, however, rather than any unfrequency of meeting. Had she been different when I did see her, I should have made no complaint, but from the very first she was altered; my first reception was so unlike what I had hoped, that I had almost resolved on leaving London again directly. - I need not particularize. you know the weak side of her character, and may imagine the sentiments and expressions which were torturing me. She was in high spirits, and surrounded by those who were giving all the support of their own bad sense to her too lively mind." -Edward, speaking to Fanny of Mary Crawford

"I have no jealousy of any individual. It is the influence of the fashionable world altogether that I am jealous of." -Edward

"Her eye fell every where on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state, when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination." -Fanny, coming back to Mansfield

"Cruelty, do you call it? - We differ there. No, her's in not a cruel nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil lies yet deeper; in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being such feelings, in a perversion of mind which made it natural to her to treat the subject as she did. She was speaking only, as she had been used to hear others speak, as she imagined every body else would speak. Her's are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would - Her's are faults of principle, Fanny, of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me - since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do." -Edward, reflecting on Mary Crawford

From The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

"Another voice, dry as tinder, hissed, 'You would do well to remember where you are.' It should be impossible to hiss a sentence with no sibilants in it, but the voice made a very good attempt."

"When the red star lights the sky Rincewind the wizard will come looking for onions. Do not bite him. It is very important that you help him stay alive."

"Oh yes. No end of fun. Volcanoes all over the place. It really meant something, being a rock then. There was none of this sedimentary nonsense, you were igneous or nothing. Of course, that's all gone now. People call themselves troll today, well, sometimes they're hardly more than slate. Chalk even. I wouldn't give myself airs if you could use me to draw with, would you?"

From The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

"Love, love, the deepest discontinuity."

"Deny not your own mortality. [The voice was within him like a wind, one of her voices, only one, he knew, and in the sound was love, he was loved.] You failed because humans fail. It is a gift as much as anything else."

"It was not a bad thing to learn what hurt meant, and mastering it alone helped engender self-respect."

"Torc had no problems with being alone, he had been so all his adult life. Outcast, the young ones called him, in mockery. The Wolf. Stupid babies: wolves ran in packs. When had he ever? The solitude had made for some bitterness, for he was young yet, and the memory of other times was fresh enough to be a wound. It had also given him a certain view of what humans did. Another kind of animal. If he lacked tolerance, it was not a surprising flaw."

From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

"'And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundreth of all there is to see it makes me feel,' he paused, then added, 'well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course.'" --Twoflower to Rincewind

"Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zyephyrs, although breezes were rare indeed in Death's silent garden."

"'I have a task for you,' said Fate. His words drifted across Death's scythe and split tidily into two ribbons of consonants and vowels."

"He stood up and leveled the scythe at the fat and noisome candle that burned on the edge of the bench and then, with two deft sweeps, cut the flame into three bright slivers. Death grinned."

From The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares

"But what would happen when they came out on the other side of the storm? They hadn't thought it through that far. They hadn't quite considered that by trusting one part of your life, you could undermine all the others. By siding with an early version of yourself, preemptively, you would doubt future selves that conflicted with it."

"You could feel things or you could find a way to shut down. But once you were feeling things, you couldn't decide exactly what to feel. That was the trouble with letting them in at all. They made such a mess of the place."

"Hardest of all, he had to trust her to love him. He knew that was not a trial for Alice, who was so gifted at being loved and loving, but rather for him, who was so poor at both."

From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

"I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. [...] Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart." --Elizabeth to Mr. Collins, refusing his proposal (again).

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense."--Elizabeth to Jane

"Elizabeth could never address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over, and though determined not to slacken as a correspondent it was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was." --Regarding Charlotte Lucas

"Having never even fancied herself in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment, and, from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than first attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance, and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the indulgence of those regrets which must have been injurious to her own health and their tranquility."--Describing Jane and her love for Bingley

"She longed to know at that moment what was passing in his mind - in what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything, she was still dear to him."--Describing Elizabeth thoughts of Darcy after unexpectedly meeting him at Pemberly

"She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet."

"I often think that there is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends. One seems so forlorn without them." --Mrs. Bennet on Lydia's leaving home

From Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

"'Only it is so very lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy voice; and, at the thought of her lonliness, two large tears came rolling down her cheeks. 'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!' Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. 'Can you keep from crying by considering things?' she asked. 'That's the way it's done,' the Queen said with great decision: 'nobody can do two things at once, you know.'"

From The Monarch of the Glen by Neil Gaiman

"Sometimes he imagined that he was standing still and the world was moving underneath him, that he was simply pusing it past with his legs."

From How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman

"...and I was here, embodied in a decaying lump of meat hanging on a frame of calcium. [. . .] 'But knowledge is there, in the meat,' she said, 'and I am resolved to learn from it.'"

From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

"It is a small world. you do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety."

"Light, thought Fat Charlie. He sang aloud, and all the lightning bugs, the fireflies of that place, clustered around him, flickering off and on with their cold green luminescence, and in their light he could make out two eyes, bigger than dinner plates, staring down at him from a supercilious reptilian face.

He stared back. 'Evening,' he said, cheerfully.

A voice from the creature, smooth as buttered oil. 'He-llo,' it said. 'Ding-dong. You look remarkably like dinner.'

'I'm Charlie Nancy,' said Charlie Nancy. 'Who are you?'

'I am Dragon,' said the dragon. 'And I shall devour you in one slow mouthful, little man in a hat.'

Charlie blinked. What would my father do? he wondered. What would Spider have done? He had absolutely no idea. Come on. after all, Spider's sort of a part of me. I can do whatever he can do.

'Er. You're bored with talking to me now, and you're going to let me pass unhindered,' he told the dragon, with as much conviction as he was able to muster.

'Gosh. Good try. But I'm afraid I'm not,' said the dragon, enthusiastically. 'Actually, I'm going to eat you.'

'You aren't scared of limes, are you?' asked Charlie, before remembering that he'd given the lime to Daisy.

The creature laughed, scornfully. 'I,' it said, 'am frightened of nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing,' it said.

Charlie said, 'Are you extremely frightened of nothing?'

'Absolutely terrified of it,' admitted the Dragon.

'You know,' said Charlie, 'I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?'

'No,' said the Dragon, uncomfortably, 'I most definitely would not.'

There was a flapping of wings like sails, and Charlie was alone on the beach. 'That,' he said, 'was much too easy.'"

"They were kissing. Put like that, and you could be forgiven for presuming that this was a normal kiss, all lips and skin and possibly even a little tongue. You'd miss how he smiled, how his eyes glowed. And then, after the kiss was done, how he stood, like a man who had just discovered the art of standing and had figured out how to do it better than anyone else who would ever come along."