Requiem

This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must invent themselves, too. 

~Lauren Oliver 

The Night Circus

"I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can."

~Erin Morgenstern (said by character Alexander) 

The Night Circus

"Stories have changed, my dear boy," the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. "There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story?"

~Erin Morgenstern (said by character Alexander)