The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings.

What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.

She closed her eyes. Said the four most comforting words she knew: "Once upon a time." An incantation.

Oh my God!” Sam said again, his voice shaking. I’ve given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth.

Teach a child to love his world deeply so that he may find the beauty and joy of life.

Life is enrich with every new adventure.

I'm one of those hovering mothers and I know it's really important to have an independent child, so I'm trying to back off, but it's hard. I love him so much, and he's so funny and cute to me.

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.

I started being a comedy fan when I was, I'm going to guess, like 5 or 6 years old.

The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things ... have their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.

Great, it passes on (in constant flow).

Something deep within us drives accurate messiness into the neat channels of canonical stories.

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

You can never trust what you read.