“You should work extra hard to be your best selves. True evil has a hard time operating in the face of strenuous manifestations of good. Especially if you act right away. The longer you let evil hang around and get a grip on you, the harder it is to get rid of it.”

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

“Knowledge was like candy: you never turned it down, especially if you didn't have to work too hard to get it.”

“When there's evil standing in your way, you got to get around it however you can, Natalie. You got to look it in the eye, let it know you see it and that it can't creep up on you. What's dangerous is pretending it isn't there at all and letting it get closer and closer while you're looking someplace else, until suddenly evil's walking alongside you like you were two friends out for a stroll on Sunday. So you look it in the face. You tell it with your eyes that you know what it is, that it don't have you fooled. You tell it you know what GOOD looks like.”

“Nobody's a natural. You work to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top.”

“Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.”