At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.

First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.

One can never be sure,” the Green Wind sighed. “There is always the danger of kisses where sleeping maids are concerned. But you are safe now, and for awhile yet, and why worry about a thing that may never come to pass? Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.

These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.

Maidens stand still, they are lovely statues and all admire them. Witches do not stand still. I was neither, but better that I err on the side of witchery, witchery that unlocks towers and empties ships.

Never trust anyone under one hundred!