I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.

I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.

The life I should be living had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.

You're saying the gods don't have free will." "The power to make mistakes," Penny said. "Only we have that. Mortals

Most people are blind to magic. They move thru a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing and they’re dead before they die.

His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.

Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders.