#bartimaeus

One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#bartimaeus-trilogy #jonathan-stroud #life

Big don't mean ugly, and thin sho don't mean pretty. If a person wants to be pretty, they gotta walk pretty, talk pretty and act pretty. Can't nobody take pretty from you. ↗

— Daniel Black

#beauty #perfect-peace #pretty #self-worth #beauty

Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#jonathan-stroud #stroud #style

Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#illusion

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

— Jonathan Stroud

#amulet-of-samarkand #bartimaeus-trilogy #jonathan-stroud #ambition

It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.) ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#humor #stroud #humor

In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through." I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry." "Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes." "What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?" "More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...) ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#humor #humor

Oh, the boots were on the other eight feet now. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#bartimaeus #bartimaeus-trilogy #humor #humor

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. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#intelligence #intelligence

According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#bartimaeus-trilogy #jonathan-stroud #death