What happened?” she breathed, staring at me. “I got hit in the face with a pie,” I said. Mags stopped, blinking. “You got...hit in the face with a pie,” she repeated. “I...what? I’m sorry, but I’ve been in charge of this Library for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of really ridiculous things. I lived in Wales. And there is no way being hit with a pie should have turned you human.” “It was a really evil pie,” I said.

If anything attacked us, we could just panic at it until it went away.

They come to us, these restless dead, Shrouds woven from the words of men, With trumpets sounding overhead (The walls of hope have grown so thin And all our vaunted innocence Has withered in this endless frost) That promise little recompense For all we risk, for all we've lost.

Past experience told me he could smell my fear; it also told me that the anger accompanying it would pretty much cover the scent. It's good to know how to compensate for your own weaknesses.​

It is what it is. Isn't that how these things always go? They are what they are. We just get to cope.

You really can't go home again. Sometimes, that's a good thing. Sometimes, when you try, you find out that home isn't really there anymore... but that it wasn't only in your head before. Home actually existed. Home wasn't just a dream. Sometimes, that's the best thing of all.

Children's games are stronger than you remember once you've grown up and left them behind. They're always fair, and never kind.