“Later that afternoon, the girls sat on the porch, bored and worried. It was good that they didn't find any dead bats, but why didn't they? Was Tyler right - did the bats fly higher when it was wind...”

“It's quite simple, they poisoned it with smoke, chemicals and pollution from factories and cars, and power stations. Silly humans knew what they were doing, but carried on poisoning the planet anyway.”

“Of course there must be lots of magic in the world but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them ...”

“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the suspension of disbelief and activity of the imagination that ...”

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

“O, the sheer magnificence of words that come together like waves upon a beach, each telling its own story is a life worthy to be read”