Magic is the fifth fundamental force and is even more mysterious than gravity, which is really saying something.

Before, I suspected I might not amount to anything, and now I now I won’t, so at least it takes away the wearisome burden of delusive hope

I’ve managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years,” she announced with some small sense of achievement. “I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.

Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.

And we kissed again. It was a warm, indescribably lovely feeling. But it was more than just physical. It was a dialogue between two young people with high ideals and a Big Plan. It was about belonging, secrets, partnership, commitment.

Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can’t be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.

Bowden Cable is the sort of honest and dependable operative that is the backbone of SpecOps. They never win commendations or medalsand the public has no knowledge of them at all. They are all worth ten of people like me.

I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can’t shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.

All of everything came into existence simply because it wanted to be. The big bang wasn’t so much a big bang as a hasty dash toward an opportunity to trade nothingness for somethingness. The main contributory factor to the entire universe was a momentary effect in need of a cause.

The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although...

Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.

So you’re going to have to ask yourselves on simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?

PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales...

Those that can be troubled to muse upon the meaning of life are general disappointed when they figure it out.

Believe me, you’re going to have to do much worse than this–in the pursuit of freedom, the innocents will suffer–and at your hands.

Take no heed of her…. She reads a lot of books.

Curiosity is a descending stair…that leads to only who-knows-where.

I wasn’t particularly worried; running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees.

Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other...

I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can’t be usual to go to your favorite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.

7. 3. 12. 31. 208: Reckless disrespect of the lightless hours will not be tolerated.

A surfeit of information often hides an untruth,” he said, with annoying clarity.

Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open for blackmail.

Honor is kind of what you get when you weaponize manners …

Mr. McGregor’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? Quite the Darth Vader of children’s literature.

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

…although her mouth uttered fond words, her eyes spoke only venom.

For myself, I favored the abstract. I collected not just obsolete terms and words, but ideas.

Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.

The very possibility of death focuses the mind wonderfully.

I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!

Don’t ever call me mad, Mycroft. I’m not mad. I’m just … well, differently moraled, that’s all.

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It’s the crack cocaine of the literary world.

Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for...

You’re talking about gold and silver, cash and securities. I’m talking about the sheer beauty of the land, the value of unpolluted parkland made wild and staying wild forever.

How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.””A whale isn’t a fish, Thursday.””A whale shark is–sort of.””All right, it’s as fishy as a crayfish.””A crayfish isn’t a fish.””A starfish, then.””Still not a fish.””This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.

Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.

The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they’ve written, they write some more.

I’m beginning to think you’re the sort of person who does a great deal with very little.”He meant a liar.

In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.

True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good–and we all know how rare that is…

I’m sure it’s not all hot buttered crumpets out there in the breathing world of asphalt and heartbeats.

magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy that can be tapped by those gifted enough, using a variety of techniques that center on layered spelling, mumbled incantations, and a burst of concentrated thought channeled through the index fingers. The technical name for this energy is “variable electro-gravitational mutable subatomic force,” which doesn’t...

They had just digested a recent meal of prepositions and were happily farting out apostrophes and ampersands; the air was heav’y with th’em&.

What you see is what I am. I’ve not had my boobs done or my arse lifted, no nips, no tucks. No ribs removed, nothing. Those little strumpets we see on the silver screen today are mostly bathroom sealant. They buy breasts over the counter. What would you like, honey, small, medium or large? They...

…the known had been so long dwarfed by the unknown that confusion was an easy bedfellow.

Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.

I was in ’78 recently,” he announced. “I brought you this.”He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn’t recognize the title.”Didn’t they split in ’70?””Not always. How are things?

Have you ever wondered how nostalgia isn”t what it used to be?