The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
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.
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.
Ingenuity and incongruity always cheer me up.
Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.
We are monkeys. We like to chatter. Chattering doesn’t cost us anything.
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.
You’re allowed to grant people into the darkness, but you must allow them to come out again.
There is always time for another last minute.
Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane?
It’s not lying when you do it to officers!
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.
Sometimes you can think that ‘I’ve had enough of wizards!’ And sometimes fantasy is not just about wizards.
If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.
Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.
The truth isn’t easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.
Noble dragons don’t have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.
I know loads of coppers and dealt with them a lot when I was a journalist – coppers are easy to write for; they tend to run on rails.
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.