“Fear makes people do cruel things, things they'll be ashamed of later”

“It's an old and honored tradition for war heroes to be promoted to important offices, whether or not they're suited to it”

“It was never a big leap from "unfamiliar" to "suspected”

“Each part of your body corresponds with an element,” the Maiden explained. “Your hair is air. How you toss your head, play with your hair - that is all for air magic. You can command the wind. Arms...”

“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the suspension of disbelief and activity of the imagination that ...”

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

“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.”