It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen, someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact.

An explorer cannot stay at home reading maps other men have made.

Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.

It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.

Ha!' said the tall man drily. 'He was in high luck. Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.