Diana Wynne Jones

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.

Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.

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.

In a way it was worth it, she thought, except that it was such a total waste.

Before long, everyone was giving him answers, and feeling a little superior, because it was really remarkable the number of things Chrestomanci seemed not to know. He had heard of Hitler, though he asked Brian to refresh his memory about him, but he had only the haziest notion about Gandhi or Einstein, and he had never heard of Walt Disney or reggae.

He held out his hand to Sophie, just like Mrs. Pentstemmon, but a little less royally. Sophie levered herself up, wondering if she was meant to kiss this hand or not. But since she felt more like raising her stick and beating the King over the head with it, she shook the King's hand and gave a creaking little curtsy.

To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.

If you like, you can all think of it as my gift to you. I never had much else to give. You can get on and play your own lives as you like, while I just keep moving. This story of it all can be another gift. I__e made an arrangement with Adam. When I__e finished, which is almost now, I__ going to put the bundle of papers in the garden of the Old Fort, before I move on. Adam__ going to get them and take them to his father. And if you read it and don__ believe it__ real, so much the better. It will make another safeguard against Them.But you wouldn__ believe how lonely you get.

After that, he tried to go upstairs through the broom cupboard, and then the yard. This seemed to puzzle him a little. But finally he discovered the stairs, all except the bottom on, and fell up them on his face. The whole castle shook.

He gave Sophie the smile which had no doubt charmed the Witch of the Waste and possibly Lettie too, firing it along the fork, across the cream, straight into Sophie__ eyes, dazzlingly. __f you can bully Calcifer, the King should give you no trouble at all._ Sophie stared through the dazzle and said nothing. This, she thought, was where she slithered out. She was leaving. It was too bad about Calcifer__ contract. She had had enough of Howl. First green slime, then glaring at her for something Calcifer had done quite freely, and now this! Tomorrow she would slip off to Upper Folding and tell Lettie all about it.

Is something the matter?_ Calcifer asked. __es. My heart. There was a scarecrow at the door!_ Sophie gasped. __hat has a scarecrow to do with your heart?_ Calcifer asked. __t was trying to get in here. It gave me a terrible fright. And my heart__ut you wouldn__ understand, you silly young demon!_ Sophie panted. __ou haven__ got a heart._ __es I have,_ Calcifer said, as proudly as he had revealed his arm. __own in the glowing part under the logs. And don__ call me young. I__ a good million years older than you are! Can I reduce the speed of the castle now?

I think it was then that it dawned on me that Mum wasn't going to notice Chris was missing. She has been made so that she thinks Chris is just round the corner all the time. She doesn't realise that she never sees him. I don't know why I didn't understand earlier. If Aunt Maria can turn Chris into a wolf, she's surely strong enough to do this to Mum- except that it seems a different kind of thing, much more natural and ordinary, and I didn't really think she could do both kinds.

Howl pointed a shaky hand up toward the canopy of his bed. __hat__ why I love spiders. __f at first you don__ succeed, try, try, try, again._ I keep trying,_ he said with great sadness. __ut I brought it on myself by making a bargain some years ago, and I know I shall never be able to love anyone properly now.__he water running out of Howl__ eyes was definitely tears now.

I'll show you how," Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance.

And, suddenly, as if her head cleared, she was quite sure that wonderful things did indeed exist. Even if they're only in my own mind, she thought, they're there and worth fighting for.

And indeed if you think you're a genius at something what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.

Tantrums are seldom about the thing they appear to be about.

Annoyed?_ said Sophie. __hy should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?