Jonathan Stroud: Trending quotes (page 2)

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”