He had once found himself in a room with Lady Bessborough's long-haired white cat. He happened to be dressed in an immaculate black coat and trousers, and was there thoroughly alarmed by the cat's stalking round and round and making motions as if it proposed to sit upon him. He waited until he believed himself to be unobserved, then he picked it up, opened a window, and tossed it out. Despite falling three storeys to the ground, the cat survived, but one of its legs was never quite right afterward and it always evinced the greatest dislike of gentlemen in black clothes.

It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.

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

He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.

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

Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation.

Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.