She probably enjoys cutting up everyone's happiness. Not to mention cutting up other parts of people; given her penchant for poisoning people and turning them into beech trees, I fail to see how she has reached thirty without leaving a trail of bodies behind her.

She who laughs last may not invariably laugh best, but she does laugh.

No proper princess would come out looking for dragons," Woraug objected. "Well I'm not a proper princess then!" Cimorene snapped. "I make cherries jubillee and I volunteer for dragons, and I conjugate Latin verbs-- or at least I would if anyone would let me. So there!

Out here, it's better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you're dead.

He pushed his glasses up on his nose and gave me a sidelong look, the one that meant he was so sure you were wrong that he could just wait and let you find out for yourself the hard way.

Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver.

There is nothing that is quite so reassuring in an awkward situation as knowing that one is well turned-out, and while I hope I am not so fainthearted as to require such stratagems, I am not so foolish as to overlook their value.