Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

We have just begun to navigate a strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils.

The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves. I have always known that the big surprises await us where we have learned to be surprised by nothing, that is, where we are not shocked by ruptures in the order.

Children seem to need, then, a delicate balance between the realistic and the fantastic in their art; enough of the realistic to know that the story matters, enough of the fantastic to make what matters wonderful

What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real.

In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.