“I needed to be alone for whatever would happen. I knew that something would as certainly as if this were a last chapter.”

“We would never call inexplicable little insights 'hunches,' for fear of drawing the universe's attention. But they happened, and you knew you had been in the proximity of one that had come through if you saw a detective kiss his or her fingers and touch his or her chest where a pendant to Warsha, patron saint of inexplicable inspirations, would, theoretically, hang.”

“Art is something you choose to make... it's a bringing together of... of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.”

“I certainly didn't mind possibly sending the reader to a dictionary once in a while, but I tried not to do it too often.”

“Were you terrified, Murgatroyd?" Murgatroyd nodded eagerly. "There you go, girl: You're a terrorist. You make me twitchy, and under Article Forty-One of the 2000 Terrorism Bill, that's all I need. Time for some reasonable force, I think.”

“Was it that these particular occult streets had been made, then hidden? Their names leaked as traps in an elaborate double-bluff, so that no one could go except those who knew that suchtraps were actually destinations? Or were there really no streets there when the traps were set? Perhaps these cul-de-scas were residues, yawned into illicit existence when the atlases were drawn up by liars.”

“Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. There's a garuda to get airborne.”