That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you. - Charles de Lint

If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?

The more she tried to recapture the impulse that had set her wanting to put pen to paper, the less it seemed to have ever existed in the first place.

While he was out of the room, Tucker sauntered over to the worktable and had a look at the poetry. He read a line here and there, but couldn’t make a lot of sense out of any of it. That was the trouble with poems. It seemed you had to have a doctorate just to understand the references. Still. Some of it had a nice ring to it. …like Manjushri, I have met death,
and bear my own victory,
though not a sword… Nice. Yeah. If you knew what the hell it meant.