Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood didn__ speak until everything was quiet again. __ know you__e worrying about me, Luce,_ he said. __ut you really mustn__. These things happen when you__e an agent. You__e been snared by ghosts in the past, haven__ you? There was the one that made the bloody footprints, and the thing in the tunnels below the Aickmere Brothers store. But it__ fine, because I helped you then, and you__e helped me now. We__e there to help each other. If we do that, we__l get through._ Which was a lovely thing to say, and it made me feel a little warmer. I just had to hope it was true.

This is what the Problem means,_ he went on. __his is the effect it has. Lives lost, loved ones taken before their time. And then we hide our dead behind iron walls and leave them to the thorns and ivy. We lose them twice over, Lucy. Death__ not the worst of it. We turn our faces away.

Death is fugitive; even when you're watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your fingers. You don't get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit there, waiting for something to happen, and all at once you realize you've missed it.

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.

The Evasive Cartwheel _ © etc., Bartimaeus of Uruk, circa. 2800 B.C.E. Often imitated, never surpassed. As famously memorialized in the New Kingdom tomb paintings of Ramses III_ you can just see me in the background of The Dedication of the Royal Family before Ra, wheeling out of sight behind the pharaoh.

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

His rapier was at his belt, glittering as he swung. He reached down, ripped the sword clear. I jumped over a slashing frond of plasm, spun round with the water bottle in my hand. I hurled it across to Lockwood. George threw his rapier to me.Watch this now. Sword and bottle, sailing through the air, twin trajectories, arching beautifully through the mass of swirling tendrils towards Lockwood and me. Lockwood held out his hand. I held out mine.Remember I said there was that moment of sweet precision when we gelled perfectly as a team?Yeah, well. This wasn't it.The rapier shot past, missing me by miles. It skidded halfway across the floor. The bottle struck Lockwood plumb in the centre of his forehead, knocking him through the window.There was a moment's pause.'Is he dead?' the skulls voice said 'Yay! Oh. No, he's hanging onto the shutters. Shame. Still, this is defiantly the funniest thing I've ever seen. You three really are incompetence on a stick

If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style.""That is a footstool.

Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.

Ah, two firm friends, reunited at last! There should be sweet violin music playing for us, but I'll settle for the screams of the dying.

The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the boy watched them disappear under the hanging thatch of white hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight.

Really?""No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember.""Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.

When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it's the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort... But tea bags, brown and fresh and plenty of them, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all. OK, they may not save your life like a sword-tip or an iron circle can, and they haven't the protective power of a sudden wall of fire. But they do provide something just as vital. They help keep you sane.

There was a profound silence, abruptly broken by an enormously loud rumble from George's stomach. Plaster didn't actually fall from the ceiling, but it was close.

Lockwood gave a sudden exclamation; when I looked at him, his eyes were shining. 'On second thoughts, we can scrap my last suggestion,' he said. 'Stuff the mingling. Who wants to do that? Boring. George - this library. Where is it?

Ambition is all very well, my lad, but you must cloak it.