It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you.

One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.

Raise the stakes! Always push your luck because no one else would push it for you.

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

For an author, the nice characters aren't much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They're doing it for themselves.

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.

That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!