I Wanted To Give Readers The Feeling

The Magician Seemed To Promise That Something Torn To Bits Might Be Mended Without A Seam, That What Had Vanished Might Reappear, That A Scattered Handful Of Doves Or Dust Might Be Reunited By A Word, That A Paper Rose Consumed By Fire Could Be Made To Bloom From A Pile Of Ash. But Everyone Knew That It Was Only An Illusion. The True Magic Of This Broken World Lay In The Ability Of Things It Contained To Vanish, To Become So Thoroughly Lost, That They Might Never Have Existed In The First Place.

I Knew That I Shouldn’t Have, But I Did It All The Same; And There You Have My Epitaph, Or One Of Them, Because My Grave Is Going To Require A Monument Inscribed On All Four Sides With Rueful Mottoes, In Small Characters, Set Close Together.

The Thing That Strikes Me Now When I Think About The Wilderness Of Childhood Is The Incredible Degree Of Freedom My Parents Gave Me To Adventure There. A Very Grave, Very Significant Shift In Our Idea Of Childhood Has Occurred Since Then. The Wilderness Of Childhood Is Gone; The Days Of Adventure Are Past. The Land Ruled By Children, To Which A Kid Might Exile Himself For At Least Some Portion Of Every Day From The Neighboring Kingdom Of Adulthood, Has In Large Part Been Taken Over, Co-opted, Colonized, And Finally Absorbed By The Neighbors.

If Children Are Not Permitted-not Taught-to Be Adventurers And Explorers As Children, What Will Become Of The World...?

He Comes To This Other World And He Has To Reinvent Himself. Again, It Felt Natural, Even Though I'd Been Working Really Hard Trying To Come Up With Something.