Esther Friesner Quotes

You don't have to go by anyone's rules but your own. Everything about you is special. The only trouble is, no one but you ever seems to see it that way."
"I don't think I like your attitude."
"I don't think I care.

A high-handed air of command was one of the first symptoms of increasing power-hunger.

Yesterday’s sin is today’s trendy must-do.

Listen, Noel, I don’t believe in the occult—not the dime store demonism all the right people are barking about. They see devils everywhere but in the mirror, and they raise such a hunting howl about it that they distract attention from the real evils. What I do believe is that there are great powers walking this world—forces for true good, forces for evil we can’t begin to imagine. Too many of the small-souled can only feel good by proving how bad everyone else is. They find it easier to turn a searchlight on some imaginary wickedness outside than to strike a single inner spark that might show them their own hearts.

“I’m not a Freudian.” Dr. Fitzgerald pronounced the word as if it were axe-murderer.

Adulthood is not just gauged by years survived. An adult is able to act independently, to resist manipulation, to make his own decisions. And to take the consequences.

This—this guy is dead now, right?
Marguerite shrugged. "Death is such a fragile thing. Who knows? I've heard rumors, but you can't depend on anything these days. The greatest wizards of antiquity turn up with less warning than Hamptons houseguests."

Like many a freshman with dangerous leanings toward the Humanities, Noel circled the topic of choosing a major cautiously, occasionally poking it with a stick to see which way it lunged and which way he should jump to avoid it.

Satanism? In Whitman?
"Mmm-hmm." She threaded her arm through his. "You can find Satanism in everything if you've got the right sort of mind and you look hard enough."

The wind had blown since before time had a name and it would blow until time lost all meaning. It blew the dwindling sands of the desert across the encroaching greenness of the fields and forests, past the teeming cities with their needle spires, silver in the glaring sun. It sang a dirge for all the waste that once stretched past the edge of imagination, and it moaned a lament for all who wandered, lost and outcast and alone.

Someone should either make the rewards of good better or the punishment of evil worse. Poor planning on a grand scale, I call it. Nothing but poor planning.

Possession was nine-tenths of the law, and the stray tenth was self-possession.

Amanda gave him the freeze, too. The blue demon hesitated, unsure of whether this snub was a rejection of his leadership or his dubious social standing. There were only a few demons in Debrett’s.

Few hearts are brave enough to stand between old newspapermen and their liquor. Fewer still would defy the thirsty hordes of the electronic media.

Hell is full of incompetent rebels.