Nobody's going to hand you anything. You don't get what you don't go after.

I have lost everything, Han thought. Then he corrected himself. Every time I think I’ve lost everything, I find there’s still something else to lose.

Her clothes still smoked from the wizard’s assault. But to him, she always smelled of flowers.

Falling in love was like falling off a cliff. It felt pretty much like flying until you hit the ground.

Leicester stared fixedly at the image before him, the color bleached from his face by its brilliance. Seph sensed the headmaster's mind questing out, trying to discover and destroy the wizard behind the image, but finding nothing, no trail of magic, no stone, no flesh and blood to focus on. Jason Haley, the puppeteer, was safely ensconced in the gallery above.

Plus he was naturally lucky at cards. As Mam had always said, lucky at cards, or lucky at life. One or the other. Not both.

More and more, there were no revelations, but simply the uncovering of truths long known but dimly remembered. Everything had been written long ago. There was nothing truly new in the world, but only the slow, circular march of time that revealed the old things once again.