“Latia returned, coming around the curve and stepping through the glass. "Yes, it's our path," she reported. "And it seems to be near the ogre fen.""Oh? How do you know?" Esk asked."Oh, nothing specific. Trees twisted into pretzels, boulders cracked with hairy fist marks on them, dragons slinking about as if terrified of anything on two legs. Perhaps I am mistaken.”

“Don’t you have anything to stop a dragon?” Lux asked, climbing as fast as he could in the tree. “The only way to stop a dragon is to stab it through its heart!” Wick shouted back. “Get out of the tree before it comes back!”

“oh my god, she couldn't help thinking. I have hairy legs and I'm going to die alone.”

“I put my fingers around the unmarked ring of the spyglass and twisted. The scene became clear. Oh no! A hairy brown spider clung to a vine! I couldn't go there!I'd go to the desert to find a dragon. I began to reset the spyglass, but then I stopped myself. A spider was worse than a dragon?No.My first monsters would be spiders, then.”

“Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence.Now, the people of this land know about dragons because their leaders have warned them about them. They tell stories about cruel dragons with razor teeth and fiery breath. They recount legends of dragons hunting by night on silent wings. In short, the leaders make sure that the people believe in all the qualities of dragons, including that key quality of existence. And then they control the people — when they need to — with their fear of dragons. The people pay a dragon-slaying tax … everyone stays indoors after dark to avoid being snatched by swooping claws … and nobody ever strays out of bounds for fear of being eaten well and truly up.Perhaps somebody will wonder if dragons aren’t, after all, fictitious because — despite their size — nobody seems to have actually seen one. And so it is necessary from time to time to provide evidence: a burnt tree or two, a splintered rock, the mysterious absence of a villager. The population is controlled by the dragons in its collective mind. It’s contrived superstition, and it is possible because the people do not know enough about the way the world works to know that dragons do not exist.”

“Why no aggressive action?" Foaly squirmed in a harness built for two-legged creatures. "Oh yes, why no aggressive action? How I long for aggressive action." "I live for aggressive action!" thundered Orion squeakily which was unusual. "Oh, how I pray that dragon will turn 'round that I may smite it." "Smite it with what?" wandered Foaly "Your secret birthmark?" "Don't you mock my birthmark, which I may or may not have.”