I wept my way through teaching practice.

The friar organized a hunt. But the Alchemist was long gone – lost among the townspeople like one bad penny melting into a puddle of lead.

The gods never meant you to live forever, so why spoil they life they did give you? Is a rainbow any less beautiful because it’s short-lived? Or because you can’t grasp hold of it? Consider, man. Perhaps it is beautiful expressly because of that.

Lord bless us! I never would have believed it! said the friar, startled out of his usual cynicism. ‘An honest man!

The moment a child answers the question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ he is halfway to being an adult.

He is everything, everything, everything I ever admired and wanted and couldn’t have. He is everything I needed and couldn’t find in real life. Of course he is. That’s why I invented him.

But I refuse to say. Because I love him, and you’d give anything, wouldn’t you? You’d give anything for someone you love not to die alone and in scalding agony?

I hate clowns. You can’t see what they’re thinking.

There are things roaming around inside my head as clever as Theseus in the Labyrinth. It’s just that nobody ever gave them the necessary piece of string, so they’ll never find their way out.

The world is hollow. It’s a lot to take in. Like cracking an egg and finding nothing inside. Or a full grown elephant.