“Missing someone, they say, is self-centered.I self-center you more than ever.”

“...there's not enough of anything to go around except people and death.”

“...someone ought to invent a tool, a kind of plane to shave the lies away from stories and deception away from memories. I'm a collector of shavings.”

“The silence leans forward.”

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

“It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. ...”

“Magic or nature, they were much the same thing to Magnus.”

“You can what you wish to be.”

“We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.”

“Prayer is a realm of possibilities.”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”