“At its most elemental, a spell is no more than a recipe for change.”

“Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures.”

“What is a spell after all but a way of coaxing syllables together so persuasively that some new word is spelled...some imprecision clarified, some name Named...and some change managed.”

“It's hard to find evil in this world,' said the Witch. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.”

“The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing, while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.”

“The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.”

“When you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even it it's a moronic proclamation ... Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”