narrator

But I was not good enough. You should understand this about me__ am not a hero; not one to tap unknown reserves of courage; not one to rise to circumstance. I am the understudy who chokes on his lines when he is forced onto the stage. I am never, ever good enough.

It is time to put down the pen; time to clear the throat. Speaking is a different thing altogether from writing. The spoken word has different properties, and different powers. If I have learned anything from writing down my own tale, it is this.

But you became self-aware. Somehow, you began to hear the Narrator__ voice. You realised that you were a character in a story. You tried to fight. These actions have disrupted the flow of fiction.

So let's just forget about the whole thing and agree never to speak of it again. And I promise I'll never lie to you again.Ah, but surely you must be saying, "Hey! Isn't this entire story a work of fiction and therefore one big lie?"Perhaps. But we already agreed never to speak of it again.

All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.

We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.

Be the time he finds his way out of the chamber and the planetarium, he has become me.

If you write then you are reborn because by writing about the moment, you can relive it for a second time.

Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.