Book #33: Dream Factory

Dream Factory did not impress me as much as Scrambled Eggs At Midnight. Nevertheless, it was a cute story and managed to explore difficult-to-handle themes against a quirky background. In this I commend the authors, as the book isn't too weighty but still makes a valid point. The ending was predictable (who's surprised?) and at times the plot felt altogether too cheesy, but I don't regret reading it.

I've become increasingly quote-happy of late. Here we go!

I shrug, putting the blade of grass into her open hand. "You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that's how. You just step out out, start pulling your life of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then leave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up." (106)

It's funny how even when it's just you in your head, you pretend like nothing's wrong. Like everything is just fine, thanks for asking. It's not like I've never thought about Luke in that way-in the more-than-just-friends way. I mean, he's smart and funny, and the look in his eyes when he thinks he's just gotten one over on me makes me want to fall into them, but that's the thing that stops me--the desire for that falling and the knowledge that sometimes when you let yourself fall, you just end up splattered across the rocks. (116-117)

"I think it's easy to confuse intuition with wanting something." (150)

This time we both laugh, and underneath it all I can feel his fingers tighten around mine, trapping each one with his. He's inside the bubble, too, and we're both holding our breath. (203)

It's funny, really, all the ways we tell ourselves every day that things are going to be okay. That things are going to get better, or that things can't possibly get any worse. We all have these elaborate mechanisms to take care of our disappointments, our sadness, our pain. We build these walls around ourselves, placing bricks between us and everyone else, telling ourselves that we're just protecting ourselves, just staying safe. Sometimes the bricks are easy to see, hard things that you bump up against when you try to touch someone. Sometimes they're subtle. A slight turn of the head, a fast good-bye, a faraway look in the eyes. Sometimes I wonder why Disney never took to Repunzel, why they never tried to take that story and put it on lunchboxes and in video stores and on pink sweatshirts. Maybe it's that some fairy tales don't need to be computer animated. Maybe Randy Newman doesn't need their songs. Maybe some fairy tales don't even really need to be told, because they live inside us, scaring us with their witches and their evil spells, making us wonder if maybe this time the prince won't come in time, the princess won't wake up, and maybe for once there won't be any happily ever after. Maybe some fairy tales are just too scary to even think about. (238-239)