If only Sam could have stayed just like the Dog, she thought. A comforting friend without the complication of romantic interest.There had to be something she could do to completely discourage him, short of throwing up, or making herself totally unattractive. "I'm thirty-five," she said at last.

I’m not going,” he said. He held up the Third key like a weapon. Sensing his mood, it grew longer and sharper, till he was holding a trident as long as he was tall... “And anyone who tries to make me is going to suffer.” “Twice,” added the voice under the table.

I think there is a kind of laconic Australian leg-pulling sense of humor that is certainly in some of my stories, or is an element in some of my books, and that's probably a direct result of where I've grown up. But other than that I don't draw particularly on the Australian landscape or the Australian biology and so on. So I don't think there's anything you could point to and say is particularly Australian.

No mother, no father, no Sight.

Sometimes it is easier to see the light when you stand partly in the darkness.

Why, Yrael?” it said, as the last of the dark gave way to silver, and the shining sphere of metal sank slowly to the ground. “Why?” “Life,” said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. “Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon.

Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.