I've always been aware of the otherworld, of spirits that exist in that twilight place that lies in the corner of our eyes, of fairie and stranger things still that we spy only when we're not really paying attention to them, whispers and flickering shadows, here one moment, gone the instant we turn our heads for a closer look. But I couldn't always find them. And when I did, for a long time I thought they were only this excess of imagination that I carry around inside me, that somehow it was leaking out of me into the world.

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.

The trouble with advice is that it's usually something you don't want to hear.

I don't think the world works on merit.

You can't stand up to the night until you understand what's hiding in its shadows.

People who've never read fairy tales ... have a harder time coping in life than the people who have. They don't have access to all the lessons that can be learned from the journeys through the dark woods and the kindness of strangers treated decently, the knowledge that can be gained from the company and example of Donkeyskins and cats wearing boots and steadfast tin soldiers. I'm not talking about in-your-face lessons, but more subtle ones. The kind that seep up from your subconscious and give you moral and humane structures for your life. That teach you how to prevail, and trust. And maybe even to love.

You back down and they're gonna walk all over you. Not just today, but every goddamn day.

I believe in a different kind of magic. The kind we make between each other.

You know how we'd get along better? If everybody'd just remember how we're all related. White, black, Asian, skin. No difference. All the bloodlines go back to that one old mama in Africa.

God doesn't do anything to us. He doesn't have to. We're too busy doing it to each other.

What I want to do is travel deep and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home.

I don't know what's waiting for us when we die--something better, something worse. I only know I'm not ready to find out yet.

Children are the brightest treasures we bring forth into this world, but too large a percentage of the population continues to treat them as inconveniences and nuisances, when they're not treating them as possessions or toys.

Thing is, while I know better, I like sounding ignorant. Talk like this and people figure you're about as dumb as a fencepost, which suits me fine. Makes it all that much easier to take advantage of 'em.

You can take the woman outta the trash, but you can't take the trash out a the woman.

Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.

In the dark attics of our minds, all times mingle.

I guess there must be some good foster parents, but I never saw any. All mine ever wanted was to collect their checks and treat me like I was a piece of shit unless my case worker was coming by for a visit. Then I got moved up from the mattress in the basement to one of their kids' rooms.

Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.

You just have to pay attention. If you don't, you'll miss them, or see something else--something you expected to see rather than what was really there. Faerie voices become just the wind, a bodach ... scurrying across the street becomes just a piece of litter caught in the backwash of a bus.

There's never an easy route to the things that matter.