Magic has universal appeal. I don't believe in magic in the way that I describe in my books, but I'd love it to be real.

Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice. You would not be here if you had anywhere else to go.

This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.

In the end, love wins. It does win. We know it wins. When a person dies, love isn’t turned off like a faucet. It is an amazingly resilient part of us.

I've no idea where ideas come from and I hope I never find out; it would spoil the excitement for me if it turned out I just have a funny little wrinkle on the surface of my brain which makes me think about invisible train platforms.

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

If only the hat had mentioned a house for people who felt a bit queasy, that would have been the one for him.