The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is...

books.” The first book I ever read on my own was The Neverending Story. I studied classics at university, and in ancient literature, monsters, witches, magic, curses, and impossible machines aren’t genre, they’re just Tuesday...

All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.

Even if you hadn’t entirely deposed (and possibly killed) not one but two governments and destabilized all sorts of political regions you couldn’t even pronounce, let alone draft up constitutional monarchies for, even if you’d...

Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from...

No matter what you write, you actually can’t help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.

We think . . . that girls ought to sing. They ought to sing, and dance while they’re singing. But we are not girls, and so can be almost certain that we know nothing about...

In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.

All money is imaginary,” answered the Calcatrix simply. “Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic.

Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.””They do. You just can’t see them right,” Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. “All customs agents have them, otherwise,...

Here’s something I bet you don’t know: every time someone writes a story about a dragon a real dragon dies. Something about seeing and being seen something about mirrors that old tune about how a...

She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black...

You can’t have whatever you want. But to a child who must ask permission for every single thing, adulthood looks like a constant parade of every desire’s satisfaction. It is a heady and terrifying place....

You can kiss anyone you like. But if you sometimes wanted to kiss me, that would be all right, too.” His blush was so deep September could feel the heat of it.She leaned in, and...

For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone...

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn...

A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which you’ll learn all about when you’re...

It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.

A dragon looks like a girl when it is young.

Twelve mothers and twelve fathers were stacked into the long, thin house, each with four children, drawing the old cobalt-and-silver curtains down the center of rooms to make labyrinths of twelve dining rooms, twelve stting...

But what my car needs is gas, not memories! How can you make a car go on memories?’B.D. scratched under her Admiral’s hat. ‘What’d you think gas was, girl? ‘Course there’s all sorts of fuel,...

Men die. It’s practically what they’re for.

I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds...

Do you think I am a foo, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you ever think, even...

The great blessing and great cruelty of youth is that there seems to be time enough.

But she never could keep it straight. All the letters, the acronyms, the codes, the colors, changing like musical chairs, every week, every month. Games demons play. It meant nothing to her, except in a...

Every writing teacher I ever had except for one told me I was an awful writer, had no idea what I was doing, and should stop immediately. It only took the one to tell me...

Robots are like Mars: they needgirls. Boys won’t do;the memesoup is all wrong. They stompwhen they should kissand they’re none too keenon having things shoved inside them…It’s not a robotuntil you put a girl inside....

You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war either.

A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic.

To touch a person…to sleep with a person…is to become a pioneer,” she whispered then, “a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you...

History is a funny little creature. Do you remember visiting your old Aunt that autumn when the trees shone so very yellow, and how she owned a striped and unsocial cat, quite old and fat...

I will never be without information,’ she determined. ‘I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see...

he had not guessed how much of the body of a Quest was simply walking.

Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.

This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.

I thought: this is how you make a human being. A human being is beautiful and sick. A human being glitters and starves.

When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can’t make it run the other way again.

But cheating has always been the purview of fairies, and as we are about to enter their domain, we ought to act in accordance with local customs.

After all, growing up is nothing but an argument with your parents on the topic of whether or not you are grown. You scream am so am so am so from the moment you’re born,...

After all, in fairy tales, there was only one thing to do. In every story with a long sleep and a waking in it. An easy thing, a pretty thing. Standard currency.

She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.

Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.

I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about their Heart’s Desire—well that’s a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They’re big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon...

Time is the only magic, he said, “And Marids swim through time like the sea. Think: if you hurt yourself, and I bandage it, and after weeks and weeks it gets well and there’s no...

She had a highly developed sense of humor which in some lights looked a bit like a sense of justice.

For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither...

For most of us, fanfiction is a non-issue. Even for midlist writers. We will never be popular enough for people to play in our worlds with any frequency. The problem for us is getting people...

Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re...

War is not for winning, Masha,” sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. “It is for surviving.