Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.

City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together. . . .There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past. You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement.

If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself_ and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.

I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.

LIfe is just a game of chance, a dance with fate if you let it be so. Or you could chose to play by your rules to win.

The trigger has been squeezed, the deathly mechanism has been enabled, the fatal course of a bullet has been set. No amount of bleating or praying or wailing of cajoling can halt it or stall it or call it back.