MirrorMask

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

You can't run away from home without destroying somebody's world.

Careful lads," said the beetle at the front. "She's dangerous all right. Look at that changeable expression." "I'm not dangerous," I told them. "Dangerous. Not dangerous. Same thing," said the beetle. "And what I say," said the next beetle along, "is, it's the dangerous ones you have to watch out for.

Sometimes, "I told him, as the darkness swirled closer and closer, "you just have to say you're sorry." It's more than that, and I think by then I knew it. It's more than saying sorry. It's meaning it. It's letting the apology change things. But an apology is where it has to begin.

A plop of rain hit me on the face, one of those early raindrops that turns up five minutes ahead of all the others to let you know it's time to get indoors.

The juggler seemed worried. "Throw it a book," he said. I threw it a book, and it tore into it, like a cat ripping a small animal apart; and while the creature ate its book the juggler pushed the door open. He nearly fell into a deep chasm on the other side. "Not a disaster," he said, as if he was trying to convince himself. "We need more books. Big books." It didn't seem like a good time for reading, but I pulled two huge old books off the shelf in the corner and carried them over to him. He took one, but didn't read it. He told it what a bad book it was and threw it on the ground. The book bounced in the air and hung there quivering, and the juggler man jumped onto it and began to float away. "As long as they think you don't like them," said the juggler, "they migrate back to the library. And we get a free ride." I rode next to him on my book, and we crossed the chasm safely. The books floated away and I waved them good-bye.

There was a grumpy librarian in the library. I could tell that he was the librarian because he seemed to be made of books. I told him that we needed information, and he got us some butterfly nets and sent us up to the top floor of the library. I wondered why we were carrying nets. Valentine didn't know. The book I wanted was pretty obvious. It was called A History of Everything. Finding it was easy. Catching it, however, was not. The moment I reached for it, the whole shelfful of books took off into the air, fluttering like pigeons, and suddenly I knew what the butterfly nets were for. I waved the net about and eventually I caught A History of Everything. As soon as I'd got it, all the rest of the books flapped back to their shelf, all except one, a little red-covered book, which fluttered over my head happily.

Valentine preened, "Oh, I'm a panther," he said. "I shall slip unnoticed through the darkness like a dark unnoticeable slippy thing.

Valentine," I said, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Absolutely," he said. "If we put little wheels on our feet we could just roll around everywhere.

It's not hard to mess things up. It's a lot harder to try and put the world back together again.

We've had our ups and downs since then, but that's what families have, ups and downs.