Caring about someone isn’t complicated. It isn’t easy. But it isn’t complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.

Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.

We are not going to die.” Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. “We’re not?” “No. And do you know why?” He shook his head. “Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And...

Heroism doesn’t pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.

It bothered me that he was right. Without Sir Stuart’s intervention, I’d have been dead again already.That’s right–you heard me: dead again already.I mean, come on. How screwed up is your life (after- or otherwise)...

…nameless hideous monsters are freaking terrifying. You always fear what you don’t know, what you don’t understand, and the first step to having understanding of something is to know what to call it. It’s a...

Children have their own kind of power. When you’re teaching them, protecting them, you are more than you thought you could be. More understanding, more patient, more capable, more wise.

I poke at my skull with a finger. It didn’t feel soft or anything. I didn’t feel insane. But if you’d really lost it, would you have enough left to know? Crazy people never thought...

I’m not a philosopher, Harry,” [Michael] said. “But here’s something for you to think about, at least. What goes around comes around. And sometimes you get what’s coming around.” He paused for a moment, frowning...

Wizards and computers get along about as well as flamethrowers and libraries.

Magic is like a lot of other disciplines that people have recently begun developing, in historic terms. Working with magic is a way of understanding the universe and how it functions. You can approach it...

Don’t mess with a wizard when he’s wizarding!

Bite me, faerie fruitcake.

Let come the forces of night! We will stand!” “We will get the hell out of here is what we will do,” I muttered.

Epic sex?” I sputtered. “By what standards, precisely, is sex judged to be epic?””And tons and tons of mortal simps like you used as pawns.” Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. “There are no words....

Id me didn’t have to be concerned with long-term consequences. He was my instinctive, primitive self, driven by my most primal impulses. I wondered, briefly, if ‘id’ and ‘idiot’ came from the same root.

Maybe this is what it feels like for civilians when they see cops doing some of the dirty work. A lot of times they don’t understand what’s happening. They see something they don’t like and...

Mister didn’t come with me on cases, being above such trivial matters, but he found me pleasant company when I was at home and not moving around too much, except when he didn’t, in which...

It turns out that Molly wasn’t her mother’s daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGuyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles,...

At one time in my life, a shapeshifted, demonically possessed maniac crashing through a window and trying to rip my face off would have come as an enormous and nasty surprise.But that time was pretty...

The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right.I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled,...

I don’t want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I’d rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges...

A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who...

Rain was coming down in sheets. I could hear it, on the concrete outside and on the old building above me. It creaked and swayed in the spring thunderstorm and the wind, timbers gently flexing,...

Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I just have an annoying smile.

Harry,” she said quietly, “I know you must be angry.”I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I’m angry,” I said. “I’m a couple of steps past that point right now.

You predicted quick victory. Now it’s going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don’t you know any better than that by now?

People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain’t so.

Hell’s bells, Susan, you don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve got to get outof here.”She snorted. “Like hell.””I mean it,” I said. “You’re in danger.””Relax, Harry. I’m not letting anyone lick me, and I’m not...

We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.

A succubus on the set. Strike that, the health-conscious kid sister made it two… succubuses. Succubusees? Succubi? Stupid Latin correspondence course.

When you die, do you want to feel ashamed of what you’ve done with your life? Feel ashamed of what your life meant?

It isn’t about being fair and equal. It’s about the difference between right and wrong.” He stared out at the bloody Elinarch. “And this was wrong.

It gets kind of zen after awhile, life is a journey, time is a river, the door is ajar.

I had about as much chance to do that as I did of backpacking my car to the top of Mount Rushmore.

Harry, life isn’t simple. There is such a thing as black and white. Right and wrong. But when you’re in the thick of things, sometimes it’s hard for us to tell. You didn’t do what...

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.

Technically,’ I said, “I’m not breaking any of the Laws of Magic. I’m not robbing you of your will, so I’m clear of the Fourth Law. And you didn’t get loose, so I’m clear of...

So. You get handed a holy sword by an archangel, told to go fight the forces of evil, and you somehow remain an atheist. Is that what you’re saying?

Home is where, when you go there and tell people to get out, they have to leave.

You’re supposed to be a spirit of intellect. I don’t understand why you’re obsessed with sex.”Bob’s voice got defensive. “It’s an academic interest, Harry.””Oh yeah? Well maybe I don’t think it’s fair to let your...

Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn’t change your heart. We’re all human. We’re all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.

I’ve always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.

Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against...

I don’t know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.

Oh,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Don’t be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is,...

The last time I was at a supernatural shindig, I got poisoned and then everything there tried to kill me. So I burned the whole place to the ground.

If I was on the road to Hell, at least I was going in style.

I’m dealing with a lot of scary things. I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane.

Lea stood upon a fallen log ahead of us, staring ahead. Mouse walked up to her.Gggrrrr rawf arrrgggrrrrarrrr,” I said.Mouse gave me an impatient glance, and somehow–I don’t know if it was something in his...