Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 21
Context: “How then?” Taran asked. “Could The Book of Three deceive you?”
“No, it could not.” Dallben said. “The book is thus called because it tells all three parts of our lives: the past, the present, and the future. But it could as well be called a book of ‘if.’ If you had failed at your tasks; if you had followed an evil path; if you had been slain; if you had not chosen as you did — a thousand ‘ifs,’ my boy, and many times a thousand. The Book of Three can say no more than ‘if’ until at the end, of all things that might have been, one alone becomes what really is. For the deeds of a man, not the words of a prophecy, are what shape his destiny.”
“One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.”
Source: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (1939), P. 9.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Flann O'Brien 30
Irish writer 1911–1966Related quotes
Abiding Interests (1997), Foreword
“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”
Source: The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
“I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five”
Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 45
St. Mark's rest; the history of Venice (1877).
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)