None but the most blindly credulous will imaging the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits.

Normal people have rock collections, shell collections, key ring collections and stamp collections. (The Captain had even known somebody with a letterbox collection.) But a people collection? That had to be the most bizarre one he'd come across. Not to mention the most unethical.

Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.

It seemed to us that the fantastic can be, can do, so much more than its detractors assume: it can illuminate the real, it can distort it, it can mask it, it can hide it. It can show you the world you know in a way that makes you realise you've never looked at it, not looked at it.

Before the next minute had passed, they had all fallen to the ground. Just like that. As though someone had reached inside and turned off a switch."What happened?" Matt asked, gasping.I went from one person to the next, trying to wake them up, but they were all dead, wrote Daft Donald.

There was clairvoyance to their words and a tenderness in their inflections that instilled even in the most cynical of male hearts that faith and fate weren’t just words, they were our guides and as long as you kept your heart open, sooner or later love would find its way into it.

But Mother, I don't want to go. It's just that...I have to. I can't spend the rest of my life hiding in the attic.[...]I don't want to be a burden[...]I want to do something with my life. Figure out ways to help other third kids. Make—make a difference in the world.

There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We’re just warming up.

They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.

I have no inner life. I have no ‘intimate’ life. I am just what I-what to do. I move from one habitation to another like one of those-is it herit crabs? Taking up residence in others shells.(…)Others’ shells are fine. You come, and then you go. They’re gone

Anyone who met him today would say, *Soldier. Fighter.* They would want him on their team. As a mother she was willing to engage in pride over fear and to admit the possibility that his sacrifice was hers, too. His sacrifice was something she had been able to give her country.

. I felt the sun graze my face as I sped further and further from it all. The only negative part about running was that at some point I knew I’d have to stop. I’d have to turn around and go back. And whatever troubles had haunted me when I left, would be waiting upon my return.

You aren't allowed out of the graveyard -it's aren't, by the way, not amn't, not these days-because it's only in the graveyard that we can keep you safe. This is where you live and this is where those who love you can be found. Outside would not be safe for you. Not yet.

Luna, the thought of losing you is like losing my heart. You have me completely, and if you died because I wasn't there to protect you, it would kill me. I know you're strong, I know you're different, but that doesn't change my natural instincts. I still have to protect you.

The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.