“DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE.-Death”

“I don't regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future."THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death."What does it contain, then?"ME.”

“What is magic?Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted into the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions.Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That's the thing about quantum.”

“There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”

“But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.”

“Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down.”

“What have I always believed?That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”