I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.

I'm perfectly happy to know the world at secondhand. It's a lot safer.

Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.

Second, there are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.

And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.

She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind?