Learn to drive?" "Never," said Quentin. "My mission in life is to be a passenger.

Sophie said a bad word. In the dim light she had stubbed her toe on one of the many dusty bricks piled around the place. Naughty-naughty" Twinkle said. Oh shut up!" Sophie said , standing on one leg to hold her toe. "Why don't you grow up?

Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.

Imagination doesn’t just mean making things up. It means thinking things through, solving them, or hoping to do so, and being just distant enough to be able to laugh at things that are normally painful. Head teachers would call this escapism, but they would be entirely wrong. I would call fantasy the most serious, and the most useful, branch of writing there is. And this is why I don’t, and never would, write Real Books.

Howl said to Sophie, "I've been wondering all along if you would turn out to be that lovely girl I met on May Day. Why were you scared then?

Alas, poor Yorick!" he said. "She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that.

SAGE. A wise and Holy man who died a long time ago. No one modern qualifies.