Inkspell

Stories never really end...even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.

So what? All writers are lunatics!

This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends.

Fire and water," he said, "don't really mix. You could say they're incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.

a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.

There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

If you keep pretending you're in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you're in.

This world,' she said. 'Do you really like it?' What a question! Farid never asked himself such things. He was glad to be with Dustfinger again and didn't mind where that was. It's a cruel world, don't you think?' Meggie went on. 'Mo often told me I forget how cruel it is too easily.' With his burned fingers, Farid stroke her fair hair. It shone even in the dark. 'They're all cruel,' he said. 'The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one, too. Maybe the people don't see the cruelty in your world right away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.

You are crazy!" whispered Meggie. "You're a total lunatic!" But her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. "So what? All writers are lunatics!

What are stories for if we don't learn from them?

believe me. Sometimes when life looks to be at its grimmest, there's a light hidden at the heart of things. Clive Barker, Abarat

Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened. He was home again.

The spoken word is nothing. It hardly lives longer than an insect! Only the written word is eternal. - Balbulus

Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. His skin was wet with rain. When she didn't pull away, he took her face between his hands and kissed her again, on her forehead, on her nose, on her mouth once more. "You will come, won't you? Promisse!" he whispered.

A story wearing another dress every time you hear it - what could be better? A story that grows and puts out flowers like a living thing! But look at the stories people press in books! They may last longer, yes, but they breathe only when someone opens the book. They are sound pressed between the pages, and only a voice can bring them back to life! Then they throw off sparks, Balbulus! Then they go free as birds flying out into the world. Perhaps you're right, and the paper makes them immortal. But why should I care? Will I live on, neatly pressed between the pages with my words? Nonsense! We're none of us immortal; even the finest words don't change that, do they?

Don't let it worry you, not being able to speak,'Dustfinger had often told her. 'People tend not to listen anyway, right?

He flung his arms around her neck, but only once he saw Silvertoungue's back was turned. He never knew with fathers. "I'll save him, Meggie!" he wispered in her ear. "I'll bring Dustfinger back. This story will have a happy ending.I swear!

Memories, so sweet and bitter.. they had both nourished and devoured him for so many years. Until a time came when they began to fade, turning faint and blurred, only an ache to be quickly pushed away because it went to your heart. For what was the use of remembering all you had lost?

But after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story.

Let's be off before he gets his great horsey teeth into my poor lines of verse!

My wife loves written words ... you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, and it seems my father felt the same - but I want to hear words! Remember that when you are looking for the right words: You must ask yourself what they SOUND like! Glowing with passion, dark with sorrow, sweet with love, that's what I want. - Cosimo

with every new day, Fenoglio's story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as spider's webs and enchantingly beautiful

That bloody bastard! That thrice accursed son of a bitch!

Many [book] even lay flat in the floor open. Their spines upward. Elinor couldn't bear to look! Didn't the monster know that was the way to break a book's neck?

He felt Death reaching out to him. But all of a sudden there was something else, too: words. Words that relieved the pain, cooled his brow, and spoke of love, nothing but love... It was his daughter's voice, and the White Women withdrew their pale hands as if they had burned themselves on her love.

She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words,just large enough for her and Farid to pass through....