“The Carpenters had a threshold more solid and extensive than the Great Wall of China. I would not be in the least bit surprised if you could see it from space.”

“Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour. It came from my love of a good steak, from the way I would sometimes cry at a good movie or a moving symphony. From my life. From the hope that I could make things better for someone else, if not always for me. Somewhere, in all of that, I touched on something that wasn't tapped out, in spite of how horrible the past days had been, something that hadn't gone cold and numb inside of me. I grasped it, held it in my hand like a firefly, and willed its energy out, into the circle I had created with the spinning amulet on the end of its chain.”

“Those who deal in magic learn to see the world in a slightly differnt light than everybody else.you gain a perspective you had considered before. A way of thinking that would never have occurred to you with out exposure to the things a wizard sees and hears.When you look in to some ones eyes you see them in that other light and for just a second they see you in the same way. ”

“My wallet was getting even more anorexic than usual. At this rate I wouldn't be able to afford to protect mankind from the perils of black magic. Hells bells, that would be really embarrassing.”

“The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them.”

“You about done?” I asked him. “I need the table.”“What is it with you people?” Butters groused. “For God’s sake, these are real injuries here.”“There will be more of them than a thousand reluctant physicians could patch up if we don’t get moving,” I said. “Today’s serious business, man.”“How serious?”“Can’t think when it’s been grimmer,” I said. “Freaking waste-of-space vampires, lying around on tables you need to use.”“Useless wizards,” Thomas said, “jumping on enemy guns and accidentally shooting their allies with them.”“Oh,” I said. “That was when I jumped Ace?”He snorted. “Yeah.”

“I’m a pessimist of the human condition, as a rule, but contemplating the future and how the Carpenter kids could contribute to it was the kind of thought that gave me hope for us all, despitemyself.Of course, I suppose someone must oncehave looked down upon young Lucifer and considered what tremendous potential he contained.”