“I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.”

“What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?”

“As ever, you are wiser than I, you old genie. May the Stars grant that you are always here to look after me." "Are you taking up religion in your old age, then, Captain?""Hardly. Habit, my love, habit.”

“[W]hat is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?”

“You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.”

“Here’s something I bet you don’t know: every time someone writes a story about a dragon a real dragon dies. Something about seeing and being seen something about mirrors that old tune about how a photograph can take your whole soul. At the end of this poem I’m going to go out like electricity in an ice storm. I’ve made peace with it.”

“You know, in Fairyland-Above they said that the underworld was full of devils and dragons. But it isn’t so at all! Folk are just folk, wherever you go, and it’s only a nasty sort of person who thinks a body’s a devil just because they come from another country and have different notions. It’s wild and quick and bold down here, but I like wild things and quick things and bold things, too.”