29 quotes found
“Ambition is all very well, my lad, but you must cloak it.”
“And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.”
“It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.”
“Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style.""That is a footstool.”
“Really?""No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember.""Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.”
“Ah, two firm friends, reunited at last! There should be sweet violin music playing for us, but I'll settle for the screams of the dying.”
“Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.”
“The Evasive Cartwheel etc., Bartimaeus of Uruk, circa. 2800 B.C.E. Often imitated, never surpassed. As famously memorialized in the New Kingdom tomb paintings of Ramses III you can just see me in...”
“If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.”
“His rapier was at his belt, glittering as he swung. He reached down, ripped the sword clear. I jumped over a slashing frond of plasm, spun round with the water bottle in my hand. I hurled it across...”
“Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are no...”
“A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equa...”
“Death is fugitive; even when you're watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your fingers. You don't get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit ther...”
“This is what the Problem means, he went on. This is the effect it has. Lives lost, loved ones taken before their time. And then we hide our dead behind iron walls and leave them to the thorns and i...”
“Lockwood didnt speak until everything was quiet again. I know youre worrying about me, Luce, he said. But you really mustnt. These things happen when youre an agent. Youve been snared by ghosts in ...”
“I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered.""What! How long has it been?""Five minutes. I got bored.”
“The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace's. Now it is yours. Soon it will be Simon Lovelace's again. Take it and enjoy the consequences.”
“To my astonishment I saw him standing at a table with Kitty Jones. It was the Kitty Jones bit that was astonishing. Not the table. Though it was very nicely polished.”
“The mole dug its way deep, deep down, under the foundations of the wall. No magical alarm sounded, though I did hit my head five times on a pebble.Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same ...”
“Ithough forced through lack of space to assume the form of a stoic guinea pig crouched between the girl's shoe and the glove compartmentwas my usual dignified self.”
“In my youth, I was always one for the dramatic entrance. Now, in keeping with my character, I gravitate more toward the subtle and refined. Okay, with the occasional feathered serpent thrown in.”
