Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.

I can no longer type, so I use TalkingPoint and Dragon Dictate. It's a speech-to-text program, and there's an add-on for talking which some guys came up with.

This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books - and I wouldn't put it past them - I'm in dead trouble.

I think it's IMPOSSIBLE for anyone famous to come from here, because everyone around here is insane.

She wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.