“To the pure, all things are pure,” Antryg remarked, in Magister Magus’ best soothsayer voice, “and to the unimaginative, all things are devilish.”

“Of course I’m frivolous,” [Antryg] replied mildly. “You yourself must know how boring gravity is to oneself and everyone else.”

“The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.”

“God has judged me all my life. But that is God's privilege, my lady. Not yours.”

“If I don't read page ninety, it won't have happened to them. Black Beauty will still live with all his friends at Birtwick Park … The knights will be able to go on having jolly adventures without Lancelot meeting Guinevere and bringing the whole Round Table crashing down into ruin on their heads… ”

“The costumes help. They make it less real, disguise what it really is both for the actors and for the people who'll see it on the screen. It's like the people who read Anna Karenina, and because it's in Russia they can say, 'Oh, that's not my pain they're talking about.' And Chris is tough. She goes from one thing to the next and doesn't worry about the past. When a cat sits mere purring on your lap, you know for a fact she isn't thinking about her former owner; she's thinking about her dinner. That's Chris.”

“Then someone within closed the door, shutting Norah out into the howling dust of the night. The clouds parted briefly to reveal the full moon's cold eye, then closed again. Wind seared over the pavilion's double roof, its voice rising to a shriek. Distantly, among the maze of walls, came the frenzied barking of hundreds of tiny dogs. As she drifted towards wakefulness, Norah could not tell whether it was the wind that she heard just at the end, or whether, within the dark hall, the girl had begun to scream.”