He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.

Never assume. Never make plans. Keep doing the press-ups and deep knee bends: you'll need all your strength and flexibility when your life suddenly implodes. Maybe it won't — some people do lead enchanted lives — but odds are that it will. Some time.

One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.

Because she was a princess she had a pegasus.

I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.

Vampire. Dangerous. Unknowable. Seriously creepy. This one's name was Constantine. We'd met before.

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like slightly sticky plaster-dust. (Housecleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water.