Quotes from Jonathan Stroud

Did he do anything bad to you?" "Apart from knock me senseless, clap me in chains, and bring me to Milton Keynes? No.

I looked around me for an appropriate missile. In a glass cabinet nearby was an odd black stone, of irregular outline, small enough to lift, but large enough to brain an afrit nicely It had a lot of scribbling down one flat side, which I didn't have time to read. It was probably a set of rules for visitor to the museum, since it seemed to be written in two or three languages.

They have a modest celebrity, sir. There's been a ballad.

Well done, Albert." Scarlett's voice came from close behind him. "I'm right here. Just relax now. Ignore the shooting." Which was pretty much Albert's motto at the best of times.

Yes, yes, I know. In the cemetery, under the shadow of the cypresses, among the haunted tombs..." Sal Qin sighed and shook her head. "Why you couldn't have picked a simple coffeehouse to meet in I'll never know." "Coffeehouses are busy. It's nice and quiet among the graves," Albert said.

The air had that familiar tang of floor polish, socks and stale dinners that most schools share.

Remember—we shouldn't be able to see them," I said. "Keep looking straight ahead.

Quit worrying. I even brushed my teeth as well." "My God, you have made an effort.

Which is a pity, because at that last moment I'd have liked to tell him what I thought of him. Mind you, since in that split second we were, to all intents and purposes, one and the same, I rather think he knew anyway.

La luna risplende sui cadaveri dei vostri compagni. Gli sciacalli portano nella tana le loro teste perché vi giochino i cuccioli.»

You want me to talk with a dangerous Type Three ghost inside another haunted zone, with who knows what other Visitors around? Are you both mad? You expected me to agree to that?

According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.

One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.

Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style." "That is a footstool.

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

Watch where you leave your victims! I stubbed my toe on that.

Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.

That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference.I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price.

Really?" "No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember." "Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.

Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.

A typical master. Right to the end, he didn't give me a chance to get a word in edgeways. Which is a pity, because at that last moment I'd have liked to tell him what I thought of him. Mind you, since in that split second we were, to all intents and purposes, one and the same, I rather think he knew anyway.