Alphareader - Danielle Binks

Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman

Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Oh nothing, just Paul McCartney casually predicting the misogynistic blame-game the media put on Yoko Ono …

Anna Akhmatova poem

New York, 2022

Conor blinked. Then blinked again. “You’re going to tell me stories?” Indeed, the monster said. “Well—“ Conor looked around in disbelief. “How is that a nightmare?” Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.

'A Monster Calls' by Patrick Ness

I am a dreamer too, and I must wake into a world of dreamers. You can feel it – can’t you? – the peeling off of me, another small loss you have to bear. We all bear it, as best we can, this infinite chain of miniature losses, a hundred thousand stories, a hundred thousand endings. A rehearsal you could call it, for the last ending that’s bound to come, eventually, somewhere in the white space between here and dreaming.

'Only Ever Always' by Penni Russon