From Weaveworld
by Clive Barker
"That which can be imagined need never be lost...."
Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or phrase from which this or any
other story springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the
tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the
connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale
told as if it were of its own making.
Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great
lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.
Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and
matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden
among them is a filigree that will with time become a world.
It must be arbitrary, then, the place of which we choose to embark.
Somewhere between a past half forgotten and a future as yet only glimpsed.
This place, for instance.
This garden...