Stardust

it was a deceptive blankness, the blankness of a rock face that one only realizes cannot be climbed when one is halfway up, and there is no longer any way down

“How d’you like your baths?” she asked, solicitously, “warm, hot, or boil-a-lobster?”

“You are young, and in love,” said Primus. “Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.”

“I am the most miserable person who ever lived,” he said to the Lord Primus, when they stopped to feed the horses feedbags of damp oats.
“You are young, and in love,” said Primus. “Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.”

(Fairy Tales, as G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, are not true. They are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.)

In Which We Encounter Several Other Persons, Many of Them Still Alive, With an Interest in the Fate of the Fallen Star

He straightened his shoulders, placed the crystal snowdrop in the top buttonhole of his coat, now undone. And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed,Tristran Thorn passed beyond the fields we know . . .

. . . and into Faerie

The cold thing in his hand chimed once: a crystalline tinkling like the bells of a tiny glass cathedral. He opened his hand and held it up to the moonlight.

It was a snowdrop, made all of glass.

Harold Crutchbeck said he had heard tales, although you never should mind the half of what you hear

The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed