She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends-books she had read three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smoky London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of lights, monsters rising out of weedy twarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked once another...

I used to think the world would be like that when I got older. Wonderful all the time, exciting, happy. Instead of the way it is...


So you want to be a Wizard, Diane Duane