121
" Tristran sat at the top of the spire of cloud and wondered why none of the heroes of the penny dreadfuls he used to read so avidly were ever hungry. His stomach rumbled, and his hand hurt him so.
Adventures are all very well in their place, he thought, but there’s a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Still, he was alive, and the wind was in his hair, and the cloud was scudding through the sky like a galleon at full sail. Looking out over the world from above, he could never remember feeling so alive as he did at that moment. There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.
He understood that he was, in some way, above his problems, just as he was above the world. "
― Neil Gaiman , Stardust
125
" I would go to India for you, Victoria Forester, and bring you the tusks of elephants, and pearls as big as your thumb, and rubies the size of wren’s eggs. ‘I would go to Africa, and bring you diamonds the size of cricket balls. I would find the source of the Nile, and name it after you. ‘I would go to America – all the way to San Francisco, to the gold-fields, and I would not come back until I had your weight in gold. Then I would carry it back here, and lay it at your feet. ‘I would travel to the distant northlands did you but say the word, and slay the mighty polar bears, and bring you back their hides.’ ‘I "
― Neil Gaiman , Stardust