Feeling intensely the shopkeeper's impatience at his free use of a place of business for profitless shelter, Auberon had begun staring at the various… - John Crowley

One winter night when he was a boy … he first saw a ring around the moon. He stared up at it, immense, icy, half as wide as the night sky, and grew certain that it could only mean the End of the World. He waited thrilled in that suburban yard for the still night to break apart in apocalypse, all the while knowing in his heart that it would not: that there is nothing in this world not proper to it and that it contains no such surprises.

Stories were the way People lived. Like paths, they could be traveled in any direction, yet always ran from beginning to end.

You ask for her secret, though you might not know that's what you're about; and she can't tell you without learning it herself. And she wants not to learn that secret.