Quatrefoil

“Half the places I’ve been to never were. I make things up. Half the things I say are there cannot be found. When I was young I told a tale of buried gold, and men from leagues around dug in the woods. I dug myself.”

“Why?”

“I thought the tale of treasure might be true.”

“You said you made it up.”

“I know I did, but then I didn’t know I had.”

Don’t recognize this quote? It’s from James Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks. If you haven’t read it, you should. Need more convincing? Read on:

“I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good," the Golux said, "by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life."

"The firefly's ?" said the minstrel.

"The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire.”