Jonathan Stroud Quotes

The old pain had started up again, throbbing in my chest, stomach, bones. It wasn't healthy to be encased in a body for so long. How humans can stand it without going completely mad, I'll never know.†

As part of my current charge I have been instructed to provide an occasional journal of my recent activities*.

So I departed, leaving behind a pungent smell of brimstone. Just something to remember me by.

H-he is a messenger for you. H-h-he brings a message." "You stagger me, Simpkin! A messenger with a message! Extraordinary.

Take that stupid grin off your face," he said. "You're putting me off." "Sorry." I adopted a hideous expression of malady and woe. "That's not much better.

The darkness cloaking my mind lifted. Instantly, I was as alert as ever, crystal-sharp in all my perceptions, a coiled spring ready to explode into action. It was time to escape! Except it wasn't.

Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured. "Why?" "Um...

[T]he magician emerges from bed and we recount our tale. Her response lacks gratitude: stammering furiously, she chides us for the damage to her lawns and flowerbed. The boy is smacked; I am Spasmed; we both spend the day with nail-clippers attending to the damage to the garden.

When I landed on the top of a lamppost in the London dusk it was peeing with rain.

"Woken up, have you?" the woman said. Her voice was like broken glass in an ice bucket.†

The boy shrugged. "I've forgotten it," was all he said. And then, "I guess I wasn't taught well enough."

A better plan would be to head straight for Bart's Guide to London, since that's hugely entertaining and witty, i.e. written by me.

Today summoned painfully to earth by a short fat English magician with a dangerous stammer*.

Remember this." he said in a soft voice. "Demons are very wicked. They will hurt you if they can. Do you understand this?

Perhaps he'd want me to conjure up an illusion. That might be fun: there was bound to be a way of misinterpreting his request and upsetting him†.