You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!

Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.

Because nothing says flattery like a gun to the head.

He gave me a severe look over his spectacles and said, as if he thought the words were deadly venom and might kill me, "You are an untidy person.

A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching-they are your family. And they were my heroes.

In the action business, when you don't want to say you ran like a mouse, you call it 'taking cover.' It's more heroic.

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.