It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.

A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.

I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.

Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they'll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.

The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.

Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.

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