"Her instinct told her no, yet could she trust instincts? They were the products of man’s natural state, and there were few things as far removed from the natural as New York."

"But we had to go believe a prophecy instead of our own eyes, elf! There’s no good ever came of listening to wizards. Half of them are crazy and the other half are so old they sound crazy. And we listened! We’re the craziest of the lot."

"She is as shallow as a leaf holding rainwater."

"Forgive me for a lie, but the dead fight with the weapons they have."

"They’re never going to agree on one damned thing. You can’t make reasonable human beings out of committee members."

"Sanchi could use money. It was the green and golden bridge to everything he wanted."

"“I won’t do it,” said Barti. “Then we’ll kill you,” replied Aliska, who had grasped the fundamentals of religious debate pretty quickly."

"Children, the gods call us when they choose, but not even the priests are eager to answer."

"Dignity and self-assurance are everything to a woman, especially a naked one."

"Little ones, if any mortal under the age of ninety ever tells you, “I always learned my lessons the first time, before it was too late,” mark that person well. He lies."

"I knew the Cardinal Rule of Experiments from Master Urion’s house: The wise mage never tampers with the order of things unless his circumstances are such that the worst possible result of the experiment will be no more disastrous than not performing the experiment at all."

"For magic wears a thousand masks, but love is magic of its own and wears a myriad more."

"Monkeys and mortals are attracted to sparkly things. What makes us different from the apes is that we sometimes crack the shiny shell and see there’s nothing inside."

"Power can command wealth but wealth can’t always command power."

"In for a lamb, in for a ram, as the sheep-stealers say just before we hang them."

"Don’t mistake gratitude for love."

"Talent is no doxy to follow only where gold jingles. Even in the poorest hovels artists can be born as often as cutpurses."

"Scratch a minstrel, find a pimp!"

"There is a vast difference between innocence and stupidity."

"If we could all pick our fathers there might be ten men on earth who would have families."

"You may hear the priests claim that revenge belongs to the gods and should never be the property of man. Leave it to the gods to hog the best bits of life for themselves. When you have your enemies skewered, I think it would be wasteful not to stay and watch them writhe. I would even call it impolite. I value courtesy."

"Better a live whore than a dead virgin!"

"“A mistake, however small,” said the dead wizard, “can be more deadly than a sword.”"

"Sex is like the pursuit of wild mushrooms: Both are fascinating hobbies, both can prove most addictive, and both for the most part yield tasty results. And yet, for the novice, there exists always the chance of making that one fatal mistake. Ah, but if one lives, one learns!"

"I think the pampered highborn like the fantasy of equality."

"To shrug was in effect his philosophy of life. Either you had the answer to a problem or you didn’t. If you did, bueno, you did. If you didn’t, you shrugged and waited to see if someone would come up with the answer for you."

"Even his tie—that most treacherous of sartorial shoals, that scrap of fabric upon which many an otherwise sane man lavishes the worst lunacies of misguided self-expression and is thereby wrecked, fashionably speaking—even that was a demure navy-and-burgundy silk rep, with a faint stripe of yellow as discreet as the finest assassin."

"She hadn’t been alive very long, but already she had an extensive list of things she hated, and topping it was being told what to do."

"Pigs possess a certain native intelligence and common sense by and large missing from our greater poets. When despair lays its clammy paws across their fevered porcine brows, they do not slump about composing sonnets; they take action."

"Whoever you are, you’re too weird even for New York, and that’s saying something."

"Accidents happen; clothing does not."

"Some people just don't stop to think; they're too busy swallowing nightmares whole."

"She had majored in Philosophy at Vassar. It wasn’t the sort of thing one got over easily."

"No one missed the news in his house. Papi insisted on that. He hated ignorance, and book-ignorance was only one kind. The kid had to know that the world wasn’t nothing but half-hour time slots where everyone gets rich and happy between the commercials."

"Time had passed. It will, given half the chance."

"There are always miracles where there are children, and fascination for any tale that opens their eyes to marvels, whether or not they are sensible marvels. Even a pig knows that."

"It was an edifice that combined high tech and low taste to an astonishing degree."

"“I did warn you.” “When cats listen to humans, I’ll listen to cats,” Sandy replied lightly."

"“We are all doomed, condemned to have the flesh seared from our bones, our blood gouting from our headless necks as the dragon rends limb from limb!” “Wait a minute,” the first guard said. “How can the dragon rend us limb from limb, blood gouting and all, if it’s already seared the flesh from our bones?” Another Gorgorian guard gave him a smart thwack in the head and said, “It’s a holy vision, you clod. Things don’t need to make sense when they’re holy visions.”"

"“What a hero!” “What an idiot!” “What’s the difference?”"

"That didn’t really fit the facts or make very much sense, but as a theory it had a certain perverse appeal."

"“What is it about L.A.?” “The Great Cosmic Belly Button that attracteth the spiritual lint of the universe,” Faith replied."

"Here is what I like to do: Pretend I know what grownups are talking about."

"And the things mortals have taught me! They hate in the name of a god of love! They make war in the name of peace! They fancy themselves in the lords of creation because they are able to destroy it all!"

"The shortest way to multiply damnations is to divide mortals. Fear’s a great one for that—fear the stranger, fear the different, fear the afflicted—long as you can keep your pigeons so damn scared there’s no room in them to even try to figure out whether there’s anything real to be scared of in the first place."

"“The trouble with having royal advisors,” the king muttered half to himself, “is that they’re always trying to give a man advice!”"

"Three there are and three there be, Each will gain the rest for thee: Flesh to flesh in burning hold; Song of silver, chink of gold; Power to make others bend. None the Answer in the end."

"Gods do not explain their cruelties."

"Fools are always at the bottom of the food chain."

"“Come on, Noel, you know me. You know how I feel about books. Do you think I’d ever willfully destroy one? Ten? Hundreds? A whole library full?” “You wouldn’t,” Noel agreed. “But those friends of yours are straight out of the Dark Ages. Who knows what they’d do?” “They’d tell you what made the Dark Ages so damn dark was not enough books, that’s what they do.” Roger stuck out his chin. “They know what they owe to books more than a lot of the sitcom slaves out there. They know you can’t solve any problem in thirty minutes, less commercial breaks. They know that the past wasn’t perfect but they also know how to look through the histories for past mistakes so they’ll recognize them if they come around again. They’ll do a lot of things, but they won’t hurt books.”"