"Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. You have to assume all the problems, difficulties and doubts of other people, and to reflect back your capacity for decision-making and action, and for enduring without visible signs of worry or panic. In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have (and which is the most difficult one of all to learn or fake) is the ability to take on responsibility. It is easy to be responsible for things you control and are sure of; but to be successful you must make yourself responsible for the blunders of the people who work for you as well. Responsibility requires a highly developed ego and a good deal of courage, but it is ultimately the one test you cannot afford to fail. You must be willing to accept personal responsibility, for the success of your assignments, for the actions of the people who work for you and for the goals you have accepted or been given."

"Never reveal all of yourself to other people; hold back something in reserve so that people are never quite sure if they really know you."

"One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals."

"The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own."

"Luck can often mean simply taking advantage of a situation at the right moment. It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared."

"Together, we must advance unafraid into the modern age!"

"The boy did the preliminaries, sealing the circles, erecting the bonds. Now we were all subject to the rules of the summoning. But then he stopped. He did not progress. The woman looked at him furiously. "I've forgotten it," he said."

"The boy shrugged. "I've forgotten it," was all he said. And then, "I guess I wasn't taught well enough.""

"Maybe I'd better call a halt to the journal for a bit. Until something crops up, that is, which it hopefully won't for a couple of decades. In the meantime: farewell, enjoy your futile lives, etc. This is Bartimaeus, care of The Other Place, signing off."

"No attack yet by Archmage. Wish he'd hurry up."

"Spy three suspicious butterflies flitting over hedge. Check the planes. Yep, small foliots, arms flapping wildly. Wasp rises up behind them, shoots down out of sun, zaps them with Infernos, one, two, three. Burning butterflies crash-land in pond. Alert master to my triumph. She inspects charred fragments. Her scowl deepens; turns out they were her slaves, returning with valuable information."

"[T]he magician emerges from bed and we recount our tale. Her response lacks gratitude: stammering furiously, she chides us for the damage to her lawns and flowerbed. The boy is smacked; I am Spasmed; we both spend the day with nail-clippers attending to the damage to the garden."

"As part of my current charge I have been instructed to provide an occasional journal of my recent activities*."

"Monday In Other Place. Did nothing."

"Tuesday Ditto."

"A better plan would be to head straight for Bart's Guide to London, since that's hugely entertaining and witty, i.e. written by me."

"Wednesday Yep, same again. Saw a few nice whirling colours and things. That's it. Easy, this journal lark, isn't it?"

"Take that stupid grin off your face," he said. "You're putting me off." "Sorry." I adopted a hideous expression of malady and woe. "That's not much better."

"In the middle of the lawn was a lake adorned with an ornamental fountain, depicting an amorous Greek god trying to kiss a dolphin.†"

"So I departed, leaving behind a pungent smell of brimstone. Just something to remember me by."

"I'm only introducing it because of a small sub-clause in an Official Charge that escaped my notice a year or two back. Unfortunately the author didn't forget. Like elephants, authors are – nothing contractual escapes them."

"Today summoned painfully to earth by a short fat English magician with a dangerous stammer*."

"The old pain had started up again, throbbing in my chest, stomach, bones. It wasn't healthy to be encased in a body for so long. How humans can stand it without going completely mad, I'll never know.†"

"I'm Martha. And you are...?" A small snuffle, a smaller voice. "Nathaniel."

"I order you, Bartimaeus, to reveal whether you have diligently and wholly carried out your charge-" "Of course I have - what do you think this is, costume jewelry?"

"Remember this." he said in a soft voice. "Demons are very wicked. They will hurt you if they can. Do you understand this?"

"Perhaps he'd want me to conjure up an illusion. That might be fun: there was bound to be a way of misinterpreting his request and upsetting him†."

"When I landed on the top of a lamppost in the London dusk it was peeing with rain."

"Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured. "Why?" "Um..."

"No magical alarm sounded, though I did hit my head five times on a pebble†."

"The temperature of the room dropped fast."

"H-he is a messenger for you. H-h-he brings a message." "You stagger me, Simpkin! A messenger with a message! Extraordinary."

"The darkness cloaking my mind lifted. Instantly, I was as alert as ever, crystal-sharp in all my perceptions, a coiled spring ready to explode into action. It was time to escape! Except it wasn't."

"I know you," he said. "I know your scent. Long ago, yes, but I never forget. I know your name." "A friend of a friend, perhaps?" I eyed his spear-tip nervously. Unlike Eagle-beak, he didn't wave it about at all. "No... an enemy..." "Terrible when you can't remember something that's right on the tip of your tongue," I observed. "Isn't it, though? And you try so hard to recall it, but often as not you can't because some fool's interrupting you, prattling away so you can't concentrate, and-" Bull-head gave a bellow of rage. "Shut up! I almost had it then!"

""Woken up, have you?" the woman said. Her voice was like broken glass in an ice bucket.†"

"A good lesson for survival, children. When we can't find game, wolves must look to the flying Lera to aid us and scavenge a meal. Although we are Putnar, we must listen for their calls on the air, too, for as the park works together, so all nature must aid itself."

"Damn you. Are you a dragga or not?"

"So be it. "You have chosen your own destiny, Palla. And since you cannot forget the past, then let it return to haunt you-as Wolfbane always returns, the friend of the dead. For you shall truly learn of the past, Palla, when the Searchers are summoned. When Wolfbane's army of the dead come. For they are waiting, Palla, in the cave of the dark, now and always. They are with us here. They wait in dreams and in nightmares, watching and judging. They prowl angrily through the shadows, at the gates of death, waiting to pounce on the living. You talk of bones whitening to feed the crows. Then let them be your bones, scavenged by the creatures of the air. When Wolfbane comes and when the final power is unleashed. And let this be my real birthing gift to you, Palla. For I curse your family and your pack. By Wolfbane I curse you. By the power of the Sight, the power that has cursed me all my life, your little ones shall grow, and as they do, you shall all suffer. One by one your pack will be broken, until you are ready to give me your cubs. And if you do not, they too shall reap your fate. May the past that's dark with crimes, bring revenge in future times! Fear and guilt-here begun, let them break you, one by one."

"Ask a scavenger's permission to eat?" she snorted. "No, Larka, we are Putnar, we ask no one's permission."

"As a she-cub is whelped with a coat that is white, And human child stolen to suckle the Sight From a place where injustice was secretly done Then the Marked One is here and a legend begun. When Wolfbane is dreamt of with terror and dread, And untamed are tamed, prepare for the dead. For the Shape Changer's pact with the birds will come true, When the blood of the Varg blends with Man's in the dew, As the Searchers are tempted, who hunger and prowl Down the Pathways of Death, by the summoning howl. Then the truest of powers will be fleshed on the bone And the Searchers tempt nature to prey on its own. With blood at the altar, the Vision shall come When the eye of the moon is as round as the sun. In the citadel raised by the lords of before, The Stone twins await-both the power and the law. Then the past and the future shall finally show, To the wounded, the secret the Lera must know. And all shall be witness to that which will be, In the mind of the Man Varg, then none shall be free. And only a family both loving and true, May conquer the evil, so ancient, so new. As they fight to uncover what secrets they share And see in their journey how painful is care. Beware the Betrayer, whose meaning is strife, For their faith shall be tried by the markers of life, And who shall divine, in the dead of the night, The lies from the truth, the darkness from light? Like the cry of the scavenger, torn through the air A courage is needed, as deep as despair."

"You could take nothing of the kind, you fool. Besides, we hunt the weakest not just for the ease of the kill, but so that the Herla may go on, too, and feed us in the future. That is the law of the Putnar."

"It was a gray wolf, common to Transylvania, but its strength and size were unusual. It was clearly a Dragga-an alpha male, dominant in its pack-but it was bigger than most. Its fur was a beautiful glittering silver gray, and its tail was tinged with red. It had a strong, handsome face, with brilliant white fangs and gums as pink and healthy as the flesh of a new plum."

"But the wolves had learned from birth to fear the Man above all the predators, for he was a merciless hunter of their kind."

"A pack works together, Bran," he cried. "Don't ever forget that. If we don't have that, what by Tor and Fenris do we have?"

"In the swirl of its pool the home-coming salmon has no intuition of anything changed."

"By day the appalling loose beauty of prowling floes: lions’ heads, dragons, crucifix-wrecks, and a thing like a blown rose."

"Poets know their own poems in a way and to a depth that is unique.. even if they mumble a bit ..their delivery will still have important things to tell us."

"Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I'll come back and bloody haunt him."

"A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."