“Sometimes, when it seems like the pain is never going to end, I wish Id gotten a different suite of magical talents from my mother. Like the power to avoid situations that end with me willingly jam...”

“Then he looked back to me, and smiled. It was a terrible expression, filled with edges, and with knives.”

“I just feel like were starting to interfere on a level thats sort of . . . extreme. But thats what heroes do.”

“I just wasnt sure it was a good idea to approach heroing the way Id always approached detecting. Can you really shake the world until justice falls out?”

“Just thinking about how long its been since Ive managed to wind up covered in blood, I said. Its like a new trend. A blood-free trend.”

“Even when she slept, she tossed and turned and squirmed, like she was secretly a hurricane forced into a girl-body and told to exist as best she could among people who had no idea what it meant to ...”

“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.”

“I didn't even feel my face hitting the pond. Everything was darkness, glorious darkness and the final, perfect absence of pain. It was done, all of it, the running and the fighting, and the pain. A...”

“If you wish to find your answers, youll need to begin thinking, not merely reacting.-- Lily”

“But sometimes the pieces fall together the way they want to, and you can't change the story; all you can do is try to ride it out.”

“Pain is not the same as suffering. Left to itself, the body discharges pain spontaneously, letting go of it the moment that the underlying cause is healed. Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It ...”

“In pleasant peace and security How suddenly the soul in a man begins to die He shall look up above the stalled oxen Envying the cruel falcon, And dig under the straw for a stone To bruise himself on.”

“It is amazing, though, what pains your subconscious will undergo in achieve sustainable peace.”