She smiled as sweetly as a show poster for the glorified, all-American Ziegfeld girl just before dumping her second cigarette into Wally’s fresh cup of coffee.

Look, I know this seems a little half-assed...' 'No, dude. I'd be thrilled if this plan were half-assed. This is, like, no-assed.' 'You're right. It's the most no-assed thing I've ever done in my life.

Forget your pain. It was what I said when I took Father's hand in the drawing room yesterday, what I repeated again tonight. But I didn't mean this. I must be careful. Yet what bothers me isn't the power of the magic or how, to a person, they've all accepted it as truth. No, what unsettles me the most is how much I want to believe it too.

Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?

Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.

She hadn’t meant to get trapped in a conversation. That was the trouble with offering help to old people.

It's possible to pretend I'm someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.