Don't wrench your shoulder out of its socket trying to pat yourself on the back," Beldin said sourly.

Behold Vo Mimbre," Mandorallen proclaimed with pride, "queen of cities. Upon that rock the tide of Angarak crashed and recoiled and crashed again. Upon this field met they their ruin. The soul and pride of Arendia doth reside within that fortress and the power of the Dark One may not prevail against it." "We've been here before, Mendorallen," Mister Wolf said sourly.

The one of us who lies the best will get the better of the bargain. It's a game. A very exciting game that's played all over the world. Good players got rich, and bad players don't.

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration--and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth.

What happened to your foot?" "I had a little disagreement with an eagle --stupid birds, eagles. He couldn't tell the difference between a hawk and a pigeon. I had to educate him. He bit me while I was tearing out a sizable number of his wing feathers." "Uncle," Polgara said reproachfully. "He started it.

I've fallen back on this periodically, although I must say that getting out of the grocery business ranked right up there with getting out of the army as one of the happier experiences of my life.

It's only a story, isn't it?"... "Who's to say what's only a story and what's truth disguised as a story?