“Although when there were too many people around- which there certainly were today- it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning.”

“People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.”

“Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn't be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.”

“It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handling our mastery well. (No. Next question.)”

“Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic—which was what all magic was—it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that looked more or less the same from day to day and might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody’s knee and purred.”

“I didn’t want to know that the monster that lived under your bed when you were a kid not only really is there but used to have a few beers with your dad.”

“When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.”