Michael Kurland Quotes

Lord Darcy nodded. “It is difficult to look for something that you hope doesn’t exist,” he said. “I suppose we can all use the practice.”

Well, what that means is that it doesn't happen very often. Now it's happened to one small group of people—us—twice in a short time. That would seem to indicate that," he ticked a finger, "something's seriously out of whack in general, or," he ticked the next finger, "someone's out to get us in particular; which I feel is quite unlikely. At times in my paranoid past I would have assumed that the Universe is teaming up to get me, but now I'm more objective and I don't believe that. I think it, but I don't believe it.

I am not in the habit of letting someone else decide what I can and cannot do.

I mistrust these artificial things," O'Malley said. "Food doesn't grow surrounded by tinfoil.

The rules that society chooses to live by have always struck me as especially fascinating," she said. "There are things one can do but not talk about, and there are things one can talk about but not do. There are things—not apparently gender-related—that men can do, but not women, and there are things women can do, but not men. We live in an invisible maze, and we have all learned where to turn and when, so as to find our way through."
"Some of the rules are good, Mary, and many are necessary," Lord Darcy said mildly.
"You misunderstood me, my dear," Mary of Cumberland told him. "As in magic, where there are absolutely essential words to say and gestures to make or the spell won't work; so in society there are absolutely essential words to say and gestures to make or we won't understand each other or trust each other, and it will all come tumbling down around us. The problem is that the rules of society, unlike magic, have never been formalized mathematically, and we don't know which words are essential to the spell and which are just silly words.

'Be not the first by whom the new is tried,' as that poet fellow said, 'Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.'

“How are you on the high wire?”
“Wire walking? It’s simple. Any child of ten can do it—with about fourteen years practice.

He takes every change that has taken place over the past two hundred years as a personal affront.

A lot of things seem to be happening, all at once," I told Chester.
"Enemy action," he replied.
"Huh?"
"That's what you told me once. An old Army motto you found when you were doing those war books. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. This is the third time.

It had been a long time ago, when life had been less complex. Or, perhaps, it had only seemed less complex.

There’s more leg room in first class, to be sure, but there’s more poetry in second class—and more honesty in third.

He could have assigned this part of the job to another, but it was not in his conception of his duties to do so. The shorter the chain, the less chance for a broken link.

Now, let us think our way out of this perplexity. How can you kill me without my suffering any ill effects from the deed?

My Lord, I am not a superstitious man," Master Sean said. "Being a sorcerer leaves little room for superstition. A superstitious magician is unable to manipulate symbols properly, and symbolism is a large part of magic.

I don't want to color my facts with my suppositions," he said. "My facts are the results of good, reliable magic. My suppositions are just that—suppositions—and may be totally wrong.