“I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.”

“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”

“I heard a story about her once,' said James. 'She was interviewing a psychopath. She showed him a picture of a frightened face and asked him to identify the emotion. He said he didn't know what the emotion was but it was the face people pulled just before he killed them.”

“Was there anything else? asked the centaur. Did Artemis say or do anything else?Holly shook her head miserably. No. He got a little sentimental, which is unusual for him, but understandable. He told me to kiss you.She stood on tiptoes and kissed Foaly’s forehead.“Just in case, I suppose.”Foaly was suddenly upset, and almost overwhelmed, but he coughed and swallowed it down for another time.He said, Kiss Foaly. Those exact words?No, said Holly, thinking back. He kissed me, and said, Give him that from me.The centaur grinned, then cackled, then dragged her across the lab.We need to get your forehead under an electron microscope, he said.”

“He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, 'Am I not annoyed with them?' I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. 'I have seen it,' he said, 'down there by the water, batting the river with its hands.' ("A Teller of Tales")”

“That is beside the point,” I said, not giving him the satisfaction that he was right about anything, especially that I wanted to kiss him, although now that he brought it up, I was thinking about it. His kissable lips were very close to mine.”