HOLLY: Are you suggesting I occasionally stray from the rule book? FOALY: No. I'm suggesting you do not own a copy of the rule book, and if you do, you have certainly never opened it.

Excuse me, Captain. Are you two going to weep salty tears of admiration over a helmet all night, or do we have matters to discuss?

Now I can do the bolts," she slurred. "I've been trying to focus enough magic all week." The magic shifted and swirled, finally etching a picture in the air. It was a rough picture of Foaly, and he was laughing. I hate you, centaur!" screamed Opal, lunging toward, and then through, the insubstantial image. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and then she collapsed, snoring, on the floor. Artemis straightened his tie. Freud, he was certain, would have a field day with that.

The two of them went down in a heap, with not even a turkey to break their fall.

If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O.

"That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy." Pex was unrepentant. "Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us... all those things." But buried alive?! That's like in that horror movie. Y'know the one with all the horror." "I think I saw that one. With all the words going up on the screen at the end?" "Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me."

Ignorance, as they say, is usually fatal, but sometimes it can be bliss.