But this was what happened when you mined the past. You gave up control of the present. - Charles de Lint

Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.

Inside us lies every possibility that is available to a sentient being. Every darkness, every light. It is the choices we make that decide who or what we will be.