A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen.

Osbert was the only one who didn't seem suspicious. He was so interested in the Decline of Western Civilization that he missed the version of it taking place under his nose.

Fate is trying to kill me. I miss my dog. What's a doctor going to say? You're not ill, you're mad as a muffin? They'll either lock me up or tell me to get a grip and no one will believe the truth anyway.

I didn't seem to have that effect on anyone but it would have been a waste for both of us to be saints.

The facts of his existence are plain. I know that he will never silence those unspeakable voices. He heard how people killed, and how they died and their voices infected him, coursed through his body, poisoned him. He didn't know how to turn off the noise, or turn the hate back out onto the world like the rest of us. He turned it on himself. You could see that from the scars on him.

Life is absolutely horrific, leading up to absolute horror.

I've noticed that the magic getting along with someone isn't really magic. If you break it down, you can see how it happens. You say something a bit off-center and see if they react. If they get it, they push it a bit further. Then it's your turn again. And theirs. And so on, until it's banter. Once it's banter, it's friendship.