“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”

“The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.”

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”

“Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I'd bottle and wear as perfume if I could. ”

“Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it excape. One step of not breathing.”

“The world was all magic, and he had a special bottle of it in his right hand.”