Don't call me a dinosaur. It isn't fair to the dinosaurs. What did a dinosaur ever do to you?

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

Black Court vampires. I just shortened it some." Ebenezar tsked. "Blampires. That's the problem with you young people. Shortening all the words.

I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.

As in 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'?" The skull howled with laughter. "You just got your ass handed to you by a nursery tale?""I wouldn't say they handed me my ass," I said.Bob was nearly strangling on his laughter, and given that he had no lungs it seemed gratuitous somehow. "That's because you can't see yourself," he choked out. "Your nose is all swollen up and you've got two black eyes. You look like a raccoon. Holding a dislocated ass.

All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once.

He seemed to be at that most dangerous of ages, where strength, skill, and confidence met naïveté and idealism; when young men skilled at the crafts of violence could be manipulated into employing those skills with brutal efficiency--and without questions.