Rules for a Fairy Tale
-Advice and warning to young boys and girls-
1. Youth is powerful magic
2. The mystical ordinary creates a mistrust of the familiar- take wardrobes for instance
3. Paradox: much can be doubted but the improbable should be believed
a. Shadow begets shadow
b. The unknowable touches the assumed and makes it skeptical
c. Do not assume a sword’s only use is to kill, or a chair here is a chair there, or evil is ugly and beauty good
4. The hope and fear of adults is to be one
a. They least of all can help you
5. A kind heart and honest intention prevail/A willingness to inflict suffering will cease or will be ceased
a. The unrepentant cruel do not see the last page
6. To escape life into fiction has serious consequences as much as the escape itself is necessary
a. To save one world you must neglect the other
8. Inevitable is the casting aside of innocence/Your journey greatest casualty/The mantle of independence must be passed
9. Not every friend makes it to the end
10. Imagination, more than all else, is courage
