Quotes from Jonathan Stroud

Piano player's gone," Scarlett said. "That's always a bad sign.

I'm coming back.

What I mean is, we're not necessarily going to run into trouble here. Despite its history of violent death.

She raised her hands to wipe her face - and discovered she could not do so. Bonds bit her wrists. Chains jangled. Her arms were painfully constrained. Clearly another great day was about to begin.

When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it's the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort… But tea bags, brown and fresh and plentiful, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all.

Holly, you look upset. Crack those doughnuts open.' 'Thanks, I'll have an apple.' 'You've got to learn that when you're stressed, an apple doesn't cut it.

It was as if all the light and love it had gathered in the past was shining out on me.

Ghost Lore among the Tribes of New Guinea and West Sumatra

We trespassed in the city of the dead, and all our skills and talents counted for nothing.

So she was well proportioned. So her hair was all glossy. So she looked as if her lips had never been the wrong side of a second doughnut in her life. What was any of that to me?

Like the rest of the team, neither of us had wanted to do anything much, other than eat and sleep and enjoy the pure mechanics of being alive. But now he was here.

The rest were rubbish compared to me.

Wrong. I'm not alone. I have my friends.

His dark eyes sparkled as he looked into mine. In that instant it was as if nothing in the world fascinated him as much as me.

Death is fugitive; even when you're watching for it, the actual instant slips between your fingers. You don't get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit there, waiting for something to happen, and all at once you realize you've missed it. Times to move along now, nothing to see. Nothing to see there ever again.

To be fair, since meeting her that morning she'd treated me with careful attention and respect; but since the same could also be said of a gloved scientist holding a blob of plague bacillus on a glass slide, I didn't read too much into it.

ALOOONE . . . Ooh, that was spooky,' it added. 'Almost frightened myself there.

They passed a succession of granite monuments to the conquering magicians of the late Victorian age and the fallen heroes of the Great War, then a few monolithic sculptures representing Ideal Virtues (Patriotism, Respect for Authority, the Dutiful Wife).

He slouched, he slumped, he scuffed his way about the house like something soft about to melt.

Peace and quiet. That's one thing to be said for deserts. They give you a chance to get away from the everyday pressures of life. And when those everyday pressures consist of seven furious djinn and one apperplectic master magician, a few hindered thousand square miles of sand, rock, wind, and desolation is exactly what you need.

Probing psychological analysis is one thing: namely impartial observation, liberally spiced with sarcasm and personal abuse — let's face it, I'm good at all that — constructive suggestions, quite another.

The adult supervisors had zero psychic sensitivity and, since they were mortally afraid of going anywhere near an actual Visitor, never ventured far into a haunted zone. Instead, they hung around on the sidelines, being old and useless, and shouting orders that were utterly out of sync with whatever was going on.

Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him

Despite myself, of course, I also couldn't help being flattered by Lockwood's words of praise.