“It hurt, of course, but more often than not the best things do, I've found.”

“I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.”

“Some things were better lost than found.”

“Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt.”

“Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.”

“Of course they had more chains on him than Scrooge saw on Marley's ghost, but he could have kicked up dickens if he'd wanted. That's a pun, son.”

“In the end it was Tabby who cast the deciding vote, as she so often has at crucial moments in my life. I'd like to think I've done the same for her from time to time, because it seems to me that one of the things marriage is about is casting the tiebreaking vote when you just can't decide what you should do next.”