If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
Anyone with half a mind could see that," said Tiffany.Miss Tick sighed. "Yes. But sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one.
. . . you worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business.
Just to keep the bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death.
People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.
Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, "It shouldn't be like this." Her mentor replies, "There isn't a way things should be.
At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.
I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors.
