I'd really like to meet Catherynne M. Valente for her book "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making":
“When you are born,” the golem said softly, “your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk, and crusty things, and dirt, and fear, and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it’s so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going, or else you’ll never be brave again.”
and
“Wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in it's changing and change with it.”
The context of the above two quotes is the house of baths that the heroine must pass through (and have her courage, and wishes, washed) before she can enter Fairyland. The language is gorgeous and the ideas heavenly, and all presented in a way that a 10 year old can manage. I'm currently reading it to a client (I'm a child psychotherapist) and she's loving it too. It's so full of hope.
But I'd probably be so intimidated by her use of language I'd clam up completely.