There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

But when reality was hopeless, fantasy became more and more necessary.

Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow.

When friends couldn't be found, the books were always waiting with something new to tell. Life that was getting too much the same could be shaken up in a few minutes by the pictures in a book of some ancient temple newly discovered deep in a rain-forest, a fuzzy photo of Uranus with it's up-and-down rings, or a prismed picture taken through the faceted eye of a bee.