“If you have let pride get the better of you, then you have already lost, but if you grab pride by the scruff of the neck and ride it like a stallion, then you may have already won.”

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.”

“--one of the reasons I'm talking to you now is to tell you that whatever you may be planning, you must not break the law. Since I have just now stepped out of this room and any voice you may be hearing cannot possibly be mine, I must however point out to you that there are times when the law may be somewhat...flexible.”

“Mort was already aware that love made you feel hot and cold and cruel and weak, but he hadn't realized that it could make you stupid.”

“[Y]ou weren't born with a talent for witchcraft: it didn't come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is and always will be high... People say you don't find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. But you've found it, even if at the time you didn't know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.”

“There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the color. The was no evil glint. But there was…… a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.”

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”