Kate Griffin

Whatever happened next, good or bad, it would be wonderful finding out.

Life is magic.I knew, without having to ask, what she meant. Life was not the magic of spells or enchantments or sorcery; or, it was, but that was not the point. Life created magic as an accidental by-product, it wasn't, definite article, absolute statement, A=B, magic. Life was magic in a more mundane sense of the word; the act of living being magic all of its own.This was something we instinctively understood - it simply hadn't occurred to us that it might need explaining.

Where there is life, there will be magic; the one generates the other.

...for life is magic, magic is life, the left-over life we don't even notice we're living.

When we blaze, when we fight, when we rejoice, then I am all us, for that is all we are. When I am...afraid...we do not understand, do not like these things. We are me. It is...frightening, having to be me.

We be light, we be life, we be fire! We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven! Come be we and be free!

Men don't ask other men if they're getting home OK, they just assume that beneath the frail, weak exterior lurks a muscle-building kung fu master fearless of ever being mugged.

Make me a shadow on the wall.

A small child being dragged to bed peered curiously at me as it passed, then waved. We waved back, not being entirely sure how else to respond to small creatures like that.

You know how it is -- you get older, you get wiser, you start to ask yourself 'is it any use being able to summon creatures of the nether deeps when I could be watching BBC 4?

When humans work, they frequently become unaware of their own body, their own senses, are surprised to find that their wrists ache or their backs are sore or their friend has left the building. It's as close to an out-of-body experience as can be achieved short of fifty volts, a circle of warding, a pigeon's claw cut from an albino female of purest white feathers, or a lot of mushrooms.

There was almost a flicker of humanity in the man. The kind of human who pulled wings off flies as a kid, but still human.

Never underestimate the ridiculous things that have been done in the name of religious-semantic obscurity.

When last I checked, you were a sorcerer, not a Jedi.""You've seen Star Wars?""Seen it and denounced it.""You've denounced Star Wars?"She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Hollywood should not glorify witches.""I think you've missed the point...""I also denounce Harry Potter.""Really?""Yes.""Because...""...because literature, especially children's literature, should not glorify witches.""Oda, what do you do for fun?"She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humor, "I denounce things.

The word spread. It began with the techno-literates: young summoners who couldn__ quite get their containment circles right and who had fallen back on Facebook to keep themselves occupied while the sacred incense was cooked in their mum__ microwaves; eager diviners who scoured the internet for clues as to the future of tomorrow, and who read the truth of things in the static at the corners of the screen; bored vampires who knew that it was too early to go out and hunt, too late still to be in the coffin. The message was tweeted and texted onwards, sent out through the busy wires of the city, from laptop to PC, PC to Mac, from mobile phones the size of old breeze blocks through to palm-held devices that not only received your mail, but regarded it as their privilege to sort it into colour-coordinated categories for your consideration. The word was whispered between the statues that sat on the imperial buildings of Kingsway, carried in the scuttling of the rats beneath the city streets, flashed from TV screen to TV screen in the flickering windows of the shuttered electronics stores, watched over by beggars and security cameras, and the message said: We are Magicals Anonymous. We are going to save the city.

Make me a shadow on the wall!

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but paranoia was what tied it up in a sack and buried it in wet concrete.

But it's not healthy!_ replied the Hag. __ mortal and a god sharing the same flesh?___ou know, this isn't why we're here. I can get abuse pretty much wherever.___eah,_ sighed the Maid, __ut I bet a tenner I can make you cry in half a minute.