Mortimer's face twisted when the Piper pressed his knife against his ribs. Oh yes, he's obviously made the wrong enemies in this story, thought Orpheus. And the wrong friends. But that was high-minded heroes for you. Stupid.

When you open a book it's like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.

Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder.

I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.

They wouldn't tell Scipio how much of the counterfeit cash was left since, as Riccio put it, 'You're a detective now, after all.

My dear Elinor, you were obviously born into the wrong story,” said Dustfinger at last.

Perhaps there's another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole. Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.