Everyone know – or at least, was probably told as a child – that you can make a wish on a shooting star. Not everyone knows that the only way to be sure it will come ture is to speak it aloud before the star disappears, and this is a nearly imposssible fet to manage.

This house had survived for many, many years. It had copper pipes that reached down into the earth like roots, its woodwork had taught its stonework how to breathe in exchange for lessons in strength, and the ironwork that chased the eaves and climbed the walls and curled along the windows danced in the sunset.

I think,” Mr. Hakelbarend said, taking a sip, “that the point of a story of the miraculous is to convey a truth, not necessarily to be true.

Troube comes when a person starts asking for money; it never does what they think it will do. And then there’s the problem of destiny. Things never turn out well when you try to outwit destiny. Only fools do that.

In a tabletop game? Chance and probability. The higher your ability score, the better your chances. You roll a die to see if you succeed. For you, here and now?” She grinned. “Believe you can do it and try hard.

There is a right way to do things and a wrong way, if you’re going to run a hotel in a smugglers’ town.

But Milo had a shiny gold present to open, and presents trumped sad trees any day of the week.

The world is not simple. The world is not one place. It’s the sum of an impossible number of incomprehensible things, and if you start out on any road in the world and follow it for any distance at all, sooner or later you enter into a strange country.

An entire notebook in code?” He dropped it on the bed and stared at Sirin. “What on earth is going on with all these people?

It is not merely our adversaries we must investigate... We must always work to know ourselves better, too.