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.

Bob, would you be willing to take on Evil Bob?”Bob’s eyes darted nervously. “I’d . . . prefer not to. I’d really, really prefer not to. You have no idea. That me was crazy. And...

Susan hardly had begun to slow down when Tera appeared from between a couple of buildings and loped over to the car. I leaned forward, opened the door, and she got into the backseat. I...

When people say the word “convention,” they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of...

She studied my face for a long minute. “Are you going to help my mom?” It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren’t that simple, that some...

You’re going to have to take care of yourself,” Karrin said quietly. “Over the next few weeks. Rest. Give yourself a chance to heal. Keep the wound on your leg clean. Get to a doctor...

Where instinct fails, intellect must venture.

The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you’re going to go.

Murphy hung up and I said, to the still-open line, “Hey, if you’ve got someone watching my place, could you call the cops if anyone tries to steal my Star Wars poster? It’s an original.”Then...

There’re things we keep hidden from one another. Things we hide from ourselves. Things that are kept hidden from us. And things no one knows. You always learn the damnedest things at the worst possible...

Karrin.”She looked up at me. She looked very young somehow.”Remember what I said yesterday,” I said. “You’re hurt. But you’ll get through it. You’ll be okay.”She closed her eyes tightly. “I’m scared. So scared I’m...

My laboratory,’ I said, experimentally, drawing out each syllable. ‘Why is it that saying it like that always makes me want to follow it with ‘mwoo-hah-hah-hahhhhh’? ”You were overexposed to Hammer Films as a child?’...

The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ‒ there weren’t any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader’s head,...

‎It isn’t enough to stand up and fight darkness. You’ve got to stand apart from it, too. You’ve got to be different from it.

Sometimes it isn’t easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn’t turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.

Empty night, Harry. Didn’t your little adventure in the lake teach you a damned thing?”I scowled some more. “Like what?””Like life is short,” he [Thomas] said. “Like you don’t know when it’s going to end....

I mean it,” I said. “You’re in danger.””Relax, Harry. I’m not letting anyone lick me, and I’m not looking anyone in the eyes. It’s kind of like visiting New York.

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.