But magic, like everything else, follows certain natural laws. Magic needs energy wherever it can find it. If no other source of energy is available, it will take the life force of the magician who created it. That is why every use of magic weakens the magician.

I published my first book in 1982 - a collection of Irish folklore called Irish Folk & Fairy Tales. It is still in print today. My first young adult book was published a couple of years later, and I've been writing in both genres ever since.

Good or bad is a matter of perspective. I met an immortal hunami once, a man called William Shakespeare, who wrote that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

What the guys have learned is that whether you're preaching to one or 10,000, it really doesn't matter. That one person you touch may change the nation - could be the Billy Graham of Ethiopia.

There have always been people like you, Nicholas Flamel. People who think they know what's best, who decide what people should see and read and listen to, who ultimately try to shape how the rest of the world think and acts. I've spent my entire life fighting the likes of you.

In my experience, we only ever regret the things we have not done.

There was no honor in war, less in killing, and none in dying. But there was true dignity in how men comported themselves in battle. And there was always honor to be found in standing for a just cause and defending the defenseless.