Jonathan Stroud Quotes

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

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

“Plan F, we follow Plan F, right now.
- Is that the one where we run away?
- Not at all. It's the one where we beat a dignified emergency retreat.”

“Pardon me, Highness, a women waits whithout."
"Whithout what?”

“Her clarity gave her purpose and her purpose gave her clarity.”

“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.”

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

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

“I had a chance at him now. Things were a bit more even. He knew my name, I knew his. He had six years' experience, I had five thousand and ten. That was the kind of odds that you could do something with.”

“Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.”

“The mercenary finished his coffee in a single gulp, It must have been piping hot, too. Boy, he was tough.”

“He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.”

“He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).”

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

“Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions.”

“I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered."
"What! How long has it been?"
"Five minutes. I got bored.”

“Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.”

“But Iget afraid. It's just that fear makes me sort of… angry and resentful, and I bite back at it. It's hard to describe."

It isn't hard to describe, you idiot," Aud said. "It's called courage.”

“If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.”

“Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.”

“Ah, you coward! Look at you, running."

"Actually, it's called improvising.”

“Okay…' I hurried on. 'But why me?'
'You're a girl,' Lockwood called. 'Aren't you supposed to be more sensitive?'
'To emotions, yes. To nuances of human behavior. Not necessarily to secret passages in a wall.'
'Oh, it's much the same thing.”

“Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)”

“Ambition is all very well, my lad, but you must cloak it.”

“Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.”

“The Hermit was known to be pretty sniffy about disciples who returned in failure. There was a wall of the institute layered with their skins- an ingenious display that encouraged vigor in his students, as well as nicely keeping out the drafts.”

“That's usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle.”

“It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.)”

“What is a gathering without unseemly drunkenness?”

“Well, I make that one murder victim, one police interrogation and one conversation with a ghost,” George said. “Now that’s what I call a busy evening.”
Lockwood nodded. “To think some people just watch television.”

“The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace's. Now it is yours. Soon it will be Simon Lovelace's again. Take it and enjoy the consequences.”

“I wasn't pretty, but as my mother once said, prettiness wasn't my profession.”

“Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.”

“Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you.”

“I rather think he knew anyway.”

“There was a loud cough from the man on the stand. I replaced My Magic Mirror carefully on his tray, gave him a cheesy smile, and went my way.”

“Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.”

“It was one of those moments when a great Don't Care wave hits you, and you float off on it, head back, looking at the sky.”

“I order you, Bartimaeus, to reveal whether you have diligently and wholly carried out your charge-"
"Of course I have - what do you think this is, costume jewelry?”

“"I know you," he said. "I know your scent. Long ago, yes, but I never forget. I know your name."
"A friend of a friend, perhaps?" I eyed his spear-tip nervously. Unlike Eagle-beak, he didn't wave it about at all.
"No… an enemy…"
"Terrible when you can't remember something that's right on the tip of your tongue," I observed. "Isn't it, though? And you try so hard to recall it, but often as not you can't because some fool's interrupting you, prattling away so you can't concentrate, and-"
Bull-head gave a bellow of rage. "Shut up! I almost had it then!"”

“Monday
In Other Place. Did nothing.”

“Spy three suspicious butterflies flitting over hedge. Check the planes. Yep, small foliots, arms flapping wildly. Wasp rises up behind them, shoots down out of sun, zaps them with Infernos, one, two, three. Burning butterflies crash-land in pond. Alert master to my triumph. She inspects charred fragments. Her scowl deepens; turns out they were her slaves, returning with valuable information.”

“"Woken up, have you?" the woman said. Her voice was like broken glass in an ice bucket.†
† Unexpectedly sharp. And cold. No one can say I don't work hard describing things for you.”

“As part of my current charge I have been instructed to provide an occasional journal of my recent activities*.
* I avoid the term blog, since coincidentally this word is also the name of a repulsive sub-caste of foliots, characterised by ooze, fleshy folds and gills of blue-grey gristle. Think slugs, but with worse personalities.”

“So I departed, leaving behind a pungent smell of brimstone. Just something to remember me by.”

“Maybe I'd better call a halt to the journal for a bit. Until something crops up, that is, which it hopefully won't for a couple of decades. In the meantime: farewell, enjoy your futile lives, etc. This is Bartimaeus, care of The Other Place, signing off.”

“The darkness cloaking my mind lifted. Instantly, I was as alert as ever, crystal-sharp in all my perceptions, a coiled spring ready to explode into action. It was time to escape!
Except it wasn't.”

“[T]he magician emerges from bed and we recount our tale. Her response lacks gratitude: stammering furiously, she chides us for the damage to her lawns and flowerbed. The boy is smacked; I am Spasmed; we both spend the day with nail-clippers attending to the damage to the garden.”

“The temperature of the room dropped fast.”

“Together, we must advance unafraid into the modern age!”

“Wednesday
Yep, same again. Saw a few nice whirling colours and things. That's it. Easy, this journal lark, isn't it?”

“The boy shrugged. "I've forgotten it," was all he said. And then, "I guess I wasn't taught well enough."”

“Today summoned painfully to earth by a short fat English magician with a dangerous stammer*.
*Dangerous because any verbal hiccup while giving me my orders would break my bonds and uncage my savage wrath. Ooh, gave myself a bit of a shiver writing that. That's literary talent.”

“Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured.
"Why?”

“Perhaps he'd want me to conjure up an illusion. That might be fun: there was bound to be a way of misinterpreting his request and upsetting him†.
†One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.”