Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun

by Guillermo del Toro

Carmen Cardoso believed the most dangerous tale of all: the one of the prince who would save her.

Evil seldom takes shape immediately. It is often little more than a whisper at first. A glance. A betrayal. But then it grows and takes root, still invisible, unnoticed. Only fairy tales give evil a proper shape. The big bad wolves, the evil kings, the demons, and devils . .

Because she wished so badly for protection, maybe her mother mistook his bloodlust for power and his brutality for strength.

In consiliis nostris fatum nostrum est, the words read. “In our choices lie our fate.”

Ofelia didn’t remind her mother that for her, there was nothing better than a book. Her mother wouldn’t understand. She didn’t make books her shelter or allow them to take her to another world. She could only see this world, and then, Ofelia thought, only sometimes. It was part of her mother’s sadness to be earthbound. Books could have told her so much about this world and about places far away, about animals and plants, about the stars! They could be windows and doors, paper wings to help her fly away. Maybe her mother had just forgotten how to fly. Or maybe she’d never learned.

Sometimes the objects we hold dear give away who we are even more than the people we love.

Only books talked about all the things adults didn’t want you to ask about—Life. Death. Good and Evil. And what else truly mattered in life.

There is no last page in the Book of Life, for the last one is always the first page of another story.