Jonathan Stroud citations

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”