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161 " But who decides what the meaning is?" Zachary wonders aloud."The reader. The player. The audience. That's what you bring to it, even if you don't make the choices along the way, you decide what it means to you." The knitting girl pauses to catch a slipped stitch and then continues. "A game or a book that has meaning to me might be boring to you, or vice versa. Stories are personal, you relate or you don't. "
― Erin Morgenstern , The Starless Sea
162 " Only a single cat notices them in this moment and though the cat recognizes this mistake for what it is, it does not interfere. It is not the way of cats to interfere with fate. "
163 " But this is not where their story ends. Their story is only just beginning. And no story ever truly ends as long as it is told. "
164 " Now in this space the days and nights pass differently. Strangely, slowly. Languid and luscious. "
165 " Once there was a woman who sculpted stories.She sculpted them from all manner of things. At first she worked with snow or smoke or clouds, because their tales were temporary, fleeting. Gone in moments, visible and readable only to those who happened to be present in the time between carving and disintegrating, but the sculptor preferred this. It left no time to fuss over details or imperfections. The stories did not remain to be questioned and criticized and second-guessed, by herself or by others. They were, and then they were not. Many were never read before they ceased to exist, but the story sculptor remembered them.Passionate love stories that were manipulated into the vacancies between raindrops and vanished with the end of the storm.Tragedies intricately poured from bottles of wine and sipped thoughtfully with melancholy and fine cheeses.Fairy tales shaped from sand and seashells on shorelines slowly swept away by softly lapping waves. "
166 " They are gods with lost myths, writing themselves new ones. "
167 " The woman laughs harder and the girl smiles. Making a witch laugh feels like a lucky sort of thing. "
168 " The Owl King is a…phenomenon. The future crashing into the present like a wave. Its wings beat in the spaces between choices and before decisions, heralding change…change of the long-awaited sort, the change foretold by prophecies and warned of by omens, written in the stars. "
169 " We are the stars,” he answers, as though it is the most obvious of facts afloat in a sea of metaphors and misdirections. “We are all stardust and stories. "
170 " The future crashing into the present like a wave. "
171 " The parliament of owls told their decision to the stars and the stars agreed. The moon did not, but on this night she was dark and could not offer her opinion "
172 " Knights who break hearts and hearts that break knights, "
173 " She remembers people and fairies and dragons with equal clarity. "
174 " Endings are what gives stories meaning. I think the whole story has meaning but I also think to have a whole story-shaped story it needs some sort of resolution. Not even a resolution, some appropriate place to leave it. A goodbye. I think the best stories feel like they’re still going, somewhere, out in story space. "
175 " Each door will lead to a Harbor on the Starless Sea, if someone dares to open it. "
176 " ...she looks up from her book with a dazed expression he's used to wearing himself, the disorientation of being pulled out of one world and back into an other "
177 " We are going to find each other and we are going to figure this out together. You may be by yourself but you are not alone. "
178 " Like I’m losing my mind, but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way. "
179 " A book is made of paper but a story is a tree "
180 " It’s funny how that works. How for so long a single year of difference matters and then after a certain point a year is nothing. "