Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.

I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.

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.

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.

The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.

The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it?