“After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name...”

“Rosalind: “Elias told me that you met with your uncle this morning. Whatever did he say to put you in such a bad temper?”Christopher: “Do you really want to know?”Rosalind: “Of course I do.”Christopher: “He told me to seduce you.”Rosalind: “How strange. That's exactly what my grandfather told me to do to you.” She bobbed a curtsy “Goodnight. Sir Christopher.”

“Going home to Millie; and the little boy who I know will rush into my arms when I get there; whose grey eyes will shine when he looks at me, who will smile with Gunther's smile.”

“The glances musicians exchange, when music is effortless, that was what he wanted from Milly, that intimacy.”

“When I asked him for some explanation as to why he wanted to kill me, he said it was because he didn't like his jobs. When I asked him since when had he not liked his jobs, he said since always. When I remarked that he had never told me this, and that I had gotten the impression that he had liked them, he said: "How is that possible? You know me. Do I strike you as stupid or boring?""No.""Then how could you think I would enjoy being an etiquette expert, or a Weight Watchers' counselor, or a stripper? How could you think that someone like me, with my mind, my character, would derive any satisfaction from those things?”

“Life isn't a vintage film," Christopher said. When he saw my confused face he explained. "Things aren't always black-and-white.”