“Of course, once you had yanked Conan the Barbarian's sword out of a book to fight off a rabid weresquirrel, "impossible" lost a lot of its punch.”

“Every libromancer had a first book. Etched more sharply into my memory than my first kiss, this book had been my magical awakening.”

“Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book.”

“I like big books and I cannot lie.You other readers can’t denyThat when a kid walks in with The Name of the WindLike a hardbound brick of win.Story bling.Wanna swipe that thingCause you see that boy is speedingRight through the book he’s reading.I’m hooked and I can’t stop pleading.Wanna curl up with that for ages,All thousand pages.Reviewers tried to warn me.But with that plot you hookedMe like Bradley.Ooh, crack that fat spine.You know I wanna make you mine.This book is stella ’cause it ain’t some quick novella.”

“A cop friend downstate had once described what he called the 'pucker effect,' the body's automatic response when something just wasn't right. He wasn't talking about the lips; the puckering happened farther south, and every cop learned to trust that instinct.”

“When Theolyn died, the humans had built an enormous pyre and placed his body at the center. How was [Veka] supposed to know humans cremated their dead instead of cooking them? She had figured it out quickly enough, but not before Jimar and his ilk had spotted her standing at the pyre, fork in hand.”

“This presents a serious question." They both looked at me. "What's that?" asked Lena. "Whether to start you off with a Doctor Who marathon or dive straight into Firefly.”