Children, As I Have Said, Use Back

Fiction Can Show You A Different World. It Can Take You Somewhere You’ve Never Been. Once You’ve Visited Other Worlds, Like Those Who Ate Fairy Fruit, You Can Never Be Entirely Content With The World That You Grew Up In. Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

Genre Fiction, As Terry Pratchett Has Pointed Out, Is A Stew. You Take Stuff Out Of The Pot, You Put Stuff Back. The Stew Bubbles On.

Fictions Are Merely Frozen Dreams, Linked Images With Some Semblance Of Structure. They Are Not To Be Trusted, No More Than The People Who Create Them.

You Know What The Really Scary Thing About Bad Dreams? It's That Something's Going On In Your Head, And You Can't Control It. I Mean, It's Like There's These Bad Worlds Inside You. But It's Just You... It's Like You're Betraying Yourself.

But Libraries Are About Freedom. Freedom To Read, Freedom Of Ideas, Freedom Of Communication. They Are About Education (which Is Not A Process That Finishes The Day We Leave School Or University), About Entertainment, About Making Safe Spaces, And About Access To Information.