[gmw]

“Why haven’t you asked me how I do my tricks?” Celia asks, once they have reached the point where she is certain he is not simply being polite about the matter.

Friedrick considers the question thoroughly before he responds.

“Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.”

They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing.

-- Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus (2011)