“There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen. But few old, bold swordsmen.”

“All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once.”

“A bunch of people are gonna be mad at me, I’ve got some kind of medical issue that’s going to kill me in a while if I don’t deal with it, oh, and the island’s blowing up tomorrow and taking a whole lot of the country with it if I don’t fix it.”Thomas gave me a steady look. “So,” he said. “Same old, same old.”

“I... drew out the gun I kept at home, a great big old Dirty Harry Callahan number that weighed about seventy-five thousand pounds.”

“I looked from the gadget-readied spear and body armor to my slender staff of plain old wood and leather duster."My dick is better than your dick," I said.”

“I'd been to the island on most weekends up until I got shot, and Thomas had often come with me. We'd used some fresh lumber, some material salvaged from the ruined town, and some pontoons made from plastic sheathing and old tractor-tire inner tubes to construct a floating walkway to serve as a dock, anchored to the old pilings that had once supported a much larger structure. Upon completion, I had dubbed it the Whatsup Dock, and Thomas had chucked me twenty feet out into the lake, thus proving his utter lack of appreciation for reference-orientated humour. (And then I'd thrown him forty feet out with magic, once I got dry. Because come on, he's my brother. It was the only thing to do.)”

“Rain was coming down in sheets. I could hear it, on the concrete outside and on the old building above me. It creaked and swayed in the spring thunderstorm and the wind, timbers gently flexing, wise enough with age to give a little, rather than put up stubborn resistance until they broke. I could probably stand to learn something from that.”