"There's nothing magic about words," he said.  "They just do things if
you say them right.  Look, if I say 'Pass the bread, please' -no
thanks, I didn't mean it really- you give it to me." [...] "But," said
Gair, "if I just said nonsense, like- er- gobbledygook or something,
then you wouldn't give me the bread.  And it's the same with
everything else.  You just have to say the right words."

			--Power of Three
%
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your feet are speedy and light
You can get there by candle-light.

			--The Babylon Secret
			  Deep Secret
%
Where is the road to Babylon?
Right beside your door.
Can I walk that way whenever I want?
No, three times and no more.
If you mark the road and measure it right
You can get there by candle-light.

			--The Babylon Secret
			  Deep Secret
%
How do I get to Babylon?
Outside of here and there.
Am I crossing a bridge or climbing a hill?
Yes, both before you're there.
If you follow outside of day and night
You can get there by candle-light.

			--The Babylon Secret
			  Deep Secret
%
How hard is the road to Babylon?
As hard as grief or greed.
What do I ask for when I get there?
Only for what you need.
If you travel in need and travel light
You can get there by candle-light.

			--The Babylon Secret
			  Deep Secret
%
How long is the road to Babylon?
Three score years and ten.
Many have gone to Babylon
But few come back again.
If your feet are nimble and light
You can get there by candle-light.

			--The Babylon Secret
			  Deep Secret
%
"Hark at him!"  Will said to me.  "He supposes they were!  That's
accessory to murder talking, that is!"

			--Deep Secret
%
Rob grinned, a wondrous, rueful smile, on one side of his mouth.  "No.
She said she wanted to be a Magid."

			--Deep Secret
%
One of the underlying reasons why I had assumed that Punt might make a
Magid was that he held himself apart from the rest of humanity.  In
fact, he was just a voyeur.  I was the one who held myself apart, and
it wasn't necessary, or right.  It was probably why I had made such a
mess of things.

			--Musings of Rupert Venables
			  Deep Secret
%
What shall I take to Babylon?
A handful of salt and grain,
Water, some wool for warmth on the way,
And a candle to make the road plain.
If you carry three things and use them right
You can be there by candle-light.

			--The Babylon Secret
			  Deep Secret
%
Simon paused in his roving and tried to pick some of the trim off the
doorway of the cubbyhole.  It was firmly fixed, so he left it and and
roved about again.  I knew that if he had got it loose he would have
played with it for an hour and then tried to weave it into the ceiling
grating.  I smiled, in spite of my growing depression.  It was good to
see Si again.

			--Deep Secret
%
"There is very seldom any true secret."

			--Andrew
			  Deep Secret
%
"Once more, my good man, gets you pins in a wax image, or worse.  I'd
do it now, and curse you into the bargain, only I'm crossed in love
and haven't the energy.  Now *you* get out of *my* way."

			--Maree Mallory
			  Deep Secret
%
"How about sausages, tomatoes or mushrooms?" the waiter asked
courteously.  I swear he was experimenting to see what noises Nick
would make for these.  Nor was he disappointed.
"M'sha, m'sha, m'sha," Nick went.

			--Deep Secret 
%
"To drink--" 
"WOOORF - EEH!" Nick proclaimed.
"Yes, we want the biggest pot of coffee you've got," I explained
hastily.  "It's urgent.  His mind's working perfectly, you see, he
just can't see or speak properly until he's had at least four cups of
coffee."

			--Deep Secret
%
"It's not the *same*!" Rupert said.  He didn't exactly stamp his foot
or even yell particularly, but the way he said it was doing both these
things, and I somehow understood that Will was his elder brother and
had had *years* of experience in winding Rupert up.

			--Deep Secret
%
"Why is it," I asked Will, after the seventh or eigth time, "that they
see a thing and don't know what it is, and I tell them that it's an
unidentified flying object, and they go away perfectly satisfied?"

			--Rupert Venables
			  End of Deep Secret
%
I said that Calcifer's come back!

			-- Michael Fisher
			   End of Howl's Moving Castle
%
You wouldn't believe how lonely you get.

			-- Jamie
			   End of Homeward Bounders
%
Can the gods catch flu?  I think I may have given it to all of them.

			-- Chrestomanci
			   End of The Sage of Theare
%
They may say money is the root of all evil, but it always strikes
me as the root of most other things as well.  

			-- Wilkins' Tooth
%
You're down as expendable.  You don't get a weapon.  

			-- Dark Lord of Derkholm
%
"I have dreamt," he said truthfully, "of white ladies in black
net, of black ladies in white net and of yellow ladies in long
lame things.  But they were none of them as beautiful as you."  

			-- Changeover
%
Why don't you do both?  Walk into the sunset screaming?  

			-- 8 Days of Luke
%
If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true
any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever.

			-- Cart and Cwidder
%
I have marked.  That's why I said Roger.  

			-- Changeover
%
A curse obeys the same laws as everything else.  It contains the seeds
of its own decay.

			-- Power of Three
%
Go and ask an invisible dragon!  

			-- Sage of Theare
%
I call one Aches and the other Pains.  The rest of the people I know are just
Grumbles and Moans.  

			-- Fire and Hemlock
%
There are no rules.  Only principles and natural laws.  

			-- Homeward Bounders
%
How can I not believe in the gods when I have seen them for myself?  

			-- Sage of Theare
%
"Is it a new thought then, to say: keep on, there's always hope?
I thought that was a very old saying."  

"Yes, but you're the first person I've met who's still saying it
when he's dead.  That has to be new."  

			-- Crown of Dalemark
%
"After Mrs Pentstemmon," she said, "the King of Ingary will seem like just an
ordinary person."  

			-- Sophie
			   Howl's Moving Castle
%
"I don't hold with it," said the great green dragon. "No
living creature has the right to claim wisdom.  There is always
more to find out."
			-- Scales
			   Dark Lord of Derkholm
%
PanCelts are frequently red-haired.  They wear plaids and have
NAMES you must consult the glossary in order to pronounce.  By
the Rules (pronounced GEAS) which govern them, they have to call
ELVES Shee (pronounced Sidhe) and refer to the ENEMY as Shadow.
Otherwise they are nice people who drink a lot of the water of
life (pronounced Uisce) and love to tell you LEGENDS by
firelight.  They also fight a lot and rather well, since both
men and women train hard from the age of ten.  But there is no
such thing as an ordinary PanCelt.  Each of them is either a
MAGIC USER or a BARD or a Druid (pronounced like a sneeze), or
sometimes all three (in which case you pronounce it Merlin).
They are governed by strong and beautiful QUEENS called things
like Maebdh Aeiolaien (pronounced Mad Eileen) or strong and
serious KINGS called, for instance, Daibhaeaidhaibh MacAeraith
(pronounced Dave Mate), and they appear to worship the Welsh Bard
Taliesin.  It is in this Bard's hounour that they all sing so
much, even more that the Shee/Elves do.  And, like the Elves,
they are prone to go on about how very much better things were in
the Old Days, when a HERO could walk in one day from Caer Dibdh
to the sea by taking a short cut through Tir n'an og (pronounced
The Many-Coloured Land).

		-- Tough Guide to Fantasyland, "PanCelts"
%
Scurvy.  Despite a diet consisting entirely of STEW and WAYBREAD,
supplememnted by only the occasional FISH, you will not suffer
from this or any other deficiency disease.  It is possible that,
while on the Tour, you absorb vitamin C through the pores of your
skin.

		-- Tough Guide to Fantasyland, "Scurvy"
%
"I wish I didn't talk to myself," she said. "I keep making myself
jump."

		-- Querida
		   The Dark Lord of Derkholm
%
Eternal Quest - see Quest, Eternal

Quest, Eternal - see Eternal Quest

		-- Tough Guide to Fantasyland
%
Now I really am your man.

		-- Tacroy
		   The Lives of Christopher Chant
%
Don't touch any of them except the dog.  Sol will bring the
whole galaxy down on us if we give him a chance.

		-- Sirius's former companion
		   Dogsbody
%
Being a child of Earth means more than you think.

		-- The Master of the Hunt
		   Dogsbody
%
IF RULES MAKE A FRAMEWORK FOR THE MIND TO CLIMB ABOUT IN, WHY
SHOULD THE MIND NOT CLIMB RIGHT OUT

        	-- The Sage of Dissolution
		   The Sage of Theare
%
She found her mind dwelling on Nowhere, as she and Tom
used to imagine it. You slipped between Here and Now to the
hidden Now and Here -- as Laurel had once told another Tom, there
was that bonny path in the middle -- but you did not necessarily
leave the world. [...] Two sides to Nowhere, Polly thought. One
really was a dead end. The other was the void that lay before you
when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else
had quite had before.

		-- Fire and Hemlock
%
"Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."

"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold
stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as
if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with
it. His bedroom door did escape him.

		-- Howl's Moving Castle
%
This book will prove the following ten facts:
 
1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.
2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.  
3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result
   is a family fight.
5. Music does not always sooth the troubled breast.
6. An Englishman's home is his castle.
7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. 
8. One black eye deserves another.
9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.
10. It pays to increase your word power.

		-- author's note
		   Archer's Goon
%
We seem to have somebody's Goon.

		-- Fifi
		   Archer's Goon
%
Unbounded truth is not a thing
Cramped to time and bound in place --
Truth strangely changes space,
By right of its reality.
It moves the hills containing me
Wider than the world, or small
As in a nut.  Truth is free
And laws are stones, or not at all,
And men without it nothing.

		-- Song of the Adon's, from Cart and Cwidder

Unbounded truth is not a thing
Cramped to time and bound in place.
It strangely changes space,
Enlarging laws to loyalty
And making words reality,
And stones words or nothing.
The boundaries containing me
Are wider than the world, by grace
Of truth, which is another thing.

This truth is mine in closer things
And walks in sight across the way,
Watching the dun leaf stray,
Only for my eyes smiling.
It moves in long hair trailing
And locked in words it sings.
This strange truth is everything
That walks at hand, and every day
Quickens with the face it brings.

But truth, which is another thing
Aside from laws or words or time,
Has strangely entered space,
Lifting the clod from under
Moving men from men asunder
And only leaves us dying.
Truth is the fighter that fetches thunder,
Kindled of itself, and only mine
In the heart that had its fashioning.

		-- Asgrim's poems to Emily, in "The True State of Affairs"
%
Come with me, come with me.
The Blackbird asks you, ' Follow me.'
No one will know, no one will know,
Wherever you go, I shall go.
Come with me.  Morning spreads,
Clouds are high in milk effects,
The moon looks like a white thumbnail,
Larks are singing up the dale.
The sun is up, so follow me.
I'd like us to go secretly
Along for road, across the hill
Where water runs and woods are still.

		-- Dagner's song, Cart and Cwidder
%
The Adon's hall was open.  Through it
Swallows darted.  The soul flies through life.
Osfameron in his mind's eye knew it.
The bird's life is not the man's life.

Osfameron walked in the eye
Of his mind.  The blackbird flew there.
He would not let the blackbird's song go by.
His mind's life can keep the bird there.

		-- Osfameron's song, Cart and Cwidder
%
On the other hand, it is quite a risk to spank a wizard for
getting hysterical about his hair.
		-- Howl's Moving Castle
%
"Why am I holding a dog full of angels?"
		-- Castle in the Air
%
"'Doh!' said Galadriel."
		-- The Dark Lord of Derkholm
%
You know that marvellous moment when your mind goes quiet with
relief. Everything was suddenly tranquil and acute with me. I
could smell the trampled grass and motor fuel that I had not
noticed before this, and the sweet, dusty scent of hay from
beyond the village.  I could hear the crackle of the bonfire as
it caught and the twittering of birds in the trees around the
green. The small, yellow flames climbing among the brushwood
seemed unbelievably clear and meaningful, all of a sudden, and my
mind was so peaceful and limpid and I found myself thinking that,
yes, Grandad could be right.
		--The Merlin Conspiracy
										                                                   Pg.26
%
"_damn_ damn bitches!" 
		--Marcus, A Sudden Wild Magic
%
That is the unexpected trouble with love affairs, I thought as I
made more coffee. You can fancy a girl like mad, but more than
just the look of her comes into it. You find yourself having to
allow for her personality, too. A five-thirty in the morning.
		--Nick, The Merlin Conspiracy
%
"'Are you,' asked Simon Aweyo, 'by any chance Jupiter Ammon?'

Changeover, now grown until he filled the sky, shook his great
dewlapped head. 'Try again,' he lowed.

'Zeus?' suggested Aweyo.

'No,' said Changeover.

'Adonis?' Aweyo desperately suggested, in defiance of the
evidence. Again Changeover shook his head. It must, Aweyo
thought, be a strictly English god, since Changeover was roast
beef. 'Yorkshire pudding?'"
		-- Changeover
%
"Happiness isn't a *thing*.  You can't go out and get it like a
cup of tea.  It's the way you feel about things."
		-- Fire and Hemlock
%
For, as Paolo and Tonino Montana were told over and over again, a
spell is the right words delivered in the right way.
		-- The Magicians of Caprona