"It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one simply assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best."

"I'm not a young man anymore. I'm retired now. But I sometimes think that all the things in my life that have made it worth the living have been as a result of my connection to the dead gentleman."

"I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him. He was a creature of hope. For dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes. And I am a creature of despair."

"The bonds of family bind both ways. They bind us up, support us, help us. And they are also a bond from which it is difficult, perhaps impossible to extricate oneself."

"We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old."

"The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?" "Doesn't everyone?" "I don't."

"I am not here to mourn him. I mourned the loss of my love a long time ago. I am here to say goodbye to a stranger who once did me a good turn. And to the man who gave my son the death he craved."

"The state of his bathroom—I'm not one to gossip, but there are things crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life, but have in all probability by now evolved their own political systems."

"Eblis O'Shaughnessy: You were created and gifted by five of the Endless, but you can neither dream nor, ultimately, destroy, and that shall be your triumph and that shall be your tragedy."

"The family did not send to ask from whom the messenger had come; it was not the first time that messengers had visited them, after all. And there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into too deeply."

"Flowers gathered in the morning, Afternoon they blossom on, Still are withered by the evening: You can be me when I'm gone."

"It's the same old story... whatever it turns into on the way, whatever it is you originally undertake to spin or knit or weave, keep it going long enough and, in the end, my lilies, it's always a winding sheet..."

"I had the hubris originally to regard myself as a collaborator, as a co-author... very rapidly I found myself reduced to the status of character, following something of a disagreement in the fundamental direction of the Creation."

"The poison spills into Loki's mouth and eyes; he writhes, and a city falls: and in the moment of pain he gains a certain clarity. The master manipulator realizes how, ultimately—how strangely, how elegantly—he too had been manipulated. Perhaps the sound he makes is laughter."

"You're crying." "Lord Shaper is in dire need, and he doesn't love me." "Would it be better if he was in dire need and did love you?"

"Sorry, sweetheart. I don't do funerals. Life is, as they say, too short. And I can't wear black. I'm an autumn." "Asshole, Hal. The word you're looking for is asshole."

"If you don't let me in, I will turn you into a demon half-face waitress night-club lady with a crush on her boss, and I'll make it so you've been that from the beginning of time to now and you'll never ever know if you were anything else and it will itch inside your head worse than little bugses."

"Alianora foretold that I would receive my scars, in my turn, like the one I left on her cheek, like the one I left on her heart. She knew it then."

"A customer at Lux's, drunk and flirtatious, peeks beneath Mazikeen's half-mask. He satisfies his curiosity, as he loses, one after the other, his drink, his lunch, and his sanity. Mazikeen has no patience with men."

"This will be felt across worlds and days as a reality storm; and, as it plays its course, conflicting realities will fall and spin and shatter across time and existence."

"They aren't your memories." "They are all I have."

"No miracles. No magic. No dreams. Just pain and death, and Visa slips."

"On reflection, while I cannot give you the thing itself, I could give you a dream of my love." "I already have that, my Lord."

"How... how dare you let that happen, Lord? How dare you?" "You will not speak to me like that, Lucien." "I doubt I'll be alive tomorrow, Lord. On that basis I find it particularly easy to say exactly what I think..."

"Yeah? Well, eumenides this!"

"Gods fear us. Demons fear us. We have hounded kings and angels. We have taken vengeance on worlds and universes. We are the Kindly Ones. We are the Eumenides."

"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare—a pumpkin with a gun."

"You guys're an elite corps. [khoff!] They say I'm hard and I am hard. They say I am a bastard, and I'll tell you what, I am a bastard. A hard, tough bastard. A tough, hard bastard with a pumpkin for a head. But that doesn't mean I can't be proud'a you dumb lugs. And I am proud of you. All'a you—Wycziezbsky, O'Brien, McTavish, Silverstein, Pucci, and the little Norwegian. While some guys have skedaddled, and others have bolted into the castle, we're the Joe's that have faced the facts. And the facts are this. Is this. Are... whatever. [khoff] [khoff] We're at war."

"Now, majesty, banishment, decapitation, or something lingering with boiling oil in it somewhere?" "Cluracan, you are a rascal..."

"I bind you, Loki Sky Walker, malice-monger. I bind you with the guts of Narvi, your son. I bind you with frost and with fire, and with the weight of the world."

"A Puck is harder by far to hurt than some little lord of malice from the lands of ice and snow. We Pucks are old and hard and wild..."

"I am the Puck, called Robin Goodfellow. I am a trickster, an antic prankster, a will o' the wisp. "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loose upon the world." That's me."

"It was like a bad TV show. "He's a reincarnated serial killer—his partner's a bird. They're cops.""

"Listen, an eye's just an eye. A few more days, and he'll be something not even a raven would eat. Over to the ants..."

"The thing you ought to remember about ravens, is that we belong equally to both genders. You don't see that every day. But we're as likely to be the Morrigan's as Odin's, as likely to be Eve's as Dream's."

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

"I am honor-bound to warn you to stay on the path through the castle. Straying from the path could mean your destruction. You killed my friend, woman. Stray from your path."

"I know lots of things. People think I don't but I really do. I know more about us than any of us. That's just one of the things I know."

"The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning—zap! Well, for ages after, people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility."

"He spoke to the embryonic silicon dreams who clustered in a far ballroom, and whispered to them, briefly, about the other machines that had dreamed in the distant past."

"Dancing salamanders brought the children silver plates filled with exotic ice-creams of various flavors, and with fruits they had never seen before and would never see again... although they would dream of them, on rare occasions, until they died."

"I have come a very long way. Further than I've ever gone before. I am seeking the Furies." "Not the Furies, my Lobelia. That's such a nasty name. It's one of the things they call women, to put us in our place..." "Termagant." "Vixen." "Witch." "Bitch." "Shrew." "Virago." "Do we look furious to you?" "No. You look very kind. Very wise. Very gentle."

"I bear no grudges. I see things as they are: how then can I bear a grudge?"

"He was a very clever doggy. He said things like... like... "I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.""

"You puzzle me, Dream-Weaver. Are you a spider who's spun a web of cunning and deceit and now waits patiently for his prey to come to him; or are you a deer frozen by the light of a hunter's flame, as disaster comes toward you?"

"And she wrapped her slimy body around his, and she whispered his name into his ear. And he screams, "Kill me, for God's sake, just get it over with." But she licks her lips with a long worm tongue, and she shakes her head. "A meal this good must never be hurried," she says. "Just hold still, boy, and let me enjoy myself." And she takes her first, gentle bite from his cheek with her sharp, sharp teeth..."

"I am the mother to Odin's stallion, Sleipnir. I am the father of Fenrir sun-eater and of Hel half-rotted and of Jormungund the world-serpent. I am Loki Scar-Lip, Loki Skywalker, Loki Giant's Child, Loki Lie-Smith. I am Loki, who is fire and wit and hate. I am Loki. And I will be under an obligation to no one."

"Do you know your tragedy, Carla? ... It's that, for all your goodwill, for all your willingness to help, you never knew what any of this was all about. What was going on. You don't know how it ends. And you'll never get to find out."

"There is a madness needed to touch the gods, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild woods of madness..."

"You don't have to believe in God. But what about gods? Eh? The plurality of powers and dominions. The lords and ladies of field and thorn, of asphalt and sewer, gods of telephone and whore, gods of hospital and car-crash?"