41
" We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever.
That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now. "
― Sarah Dessen , The Truth About Forever
54
" Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.
But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.
Are those real islands?' asked the young prince.
Of course they are real islands,' said the man in evening dress.
And those strange and troubling creatures?'
They are all genuine and authentic princesses.'
Then God must exist!' cried the prince.
I am God,' replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.
The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.
So you are back,' said the father, the king.
I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully.
The king was unmoved.
Neither real islands, nor real princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully.
The king was unmoved.
Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God exist.'
I saw them!'
Tell me how God was dressed.'
God was in full evening dress.'
Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?'
The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled.
That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.'
At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.
My father the king has told me who you are,' said the young prince indignantly. 'You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.'
The man on the shore smiled.
It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them.'
The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes.
Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?'
The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves.
Yes, my son, I am only a magician.'
Then the man on the shore was God.'
The man on the shore was another magician.'
I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.'
There is no truth beyond magic,' said the king.
The prince was full of sadness.
He said, 'I will kill myself.'
The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.
Very well,' he said. 'I can bear it.'
You see, my son,' said the king, 'you too now begin to be a magician. "
― John Fowles
58
" The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others. "
― Cormac McCarthy , Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West