“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”

“The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practice before doing it for real.”

“That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!”

“It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

“Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it.”

“...there was a general murmuring, no real words, nothing that would get anyone into trouble if the piper turned nasty, but a muttering indicating, in a general sense, without wishing to cause umbrage, and seeing everyone's point of view, and taking one thing with another, and all things being equal, that people would like to see the boy given a chance, if it's all right with you, no offence meant.”