“Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I'm considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, "Who knows why the fuck anything happens?”

“I looked into the literature on this," said Nightingale, "and it wasn't very helpful.""There's a literature about this?""You'd be amazed, Constable, about what there's a literature on.”

“Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?''Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.''What's the catch?''You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.”

“Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic.”

“I did feel a 'something', like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation.”

“As I stepped onto the gloomy landing a word formed in my mind: two syllables, starts with a V and rhymes with dire. I froze in place. Nightingale said that everything was true, after a fashion, and...”

“Politics unfortunately abounds in shams that must be treated reverentially for every politician who would succeed. If you are the sort of man whose stomach revolts against treating shams reverentia...”

“. . . the mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credu...”

“In our day everyone wants to appear intelligent, one would prefer to be accused of crime than of naivet if the accompanying risks could be avoided. But since intelligence cannot be drawn from the v...”

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

“Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.”

“And an unaware witch means a witch who doesn't know she's a witch, and because she's a women that makes her double trouble. Never trust a women." My mothers a women," I said, suddenly feeling a lit...”