“And then a prince will come along and say the magic words and three ravens will give you the magic tokens and a fish will carry you on his back”

“To do magic, to do great magic, he has to know himself as a piece of the universe.A piece of the universe?A little piece that has all the rest of it in it. Everything outside of him is also inside of him.”

“It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.”

“It was incomprehensible to Ricky that anyone could find Milburn boring: if you watched it closely for seventy years, you saw the century at work.”

“What was the worst thing you've ever done?I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing...”

“I liked the place I came from.But a lot of what I liked about it was that I had come from there.”

“You'll never get anything done if you walk around with an unchipped heart.”