It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still that she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and darkness before Time began, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and death itself would work backwards.

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect.

Never exaggerate. Never say more than you really mean.

They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?

I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.