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.

Betrayal would be a different sort of sick.

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

Because she was a princess she had a pegasus.

it goes something like 'There are a lot of ways to be yourself.

Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic--which was what all magic was--it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that...might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody's knee and purred.

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.