“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

“Malachi scowled. “I don’t remember the Clave inviting you into the Glass City, Magnus Bane.”
“They didn’t,” Magnus said. “Your wards are down.”
“Really?” the Consul’s voice dripped sarcasm. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Magnus looked concerned. “That’s terrible. Someone should have told you.” He glanced at Luke. “Tell him the wards are down.”

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

“That’s always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.”

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”