Jim C. Hines

“It’s not going to come to that,” I said.

“Nobody ever believes it will,” so the driver. “That’s why it does.”

I had said before that all stories were magic. It had never occurred to me that all magic was stories.

“Hey, I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

“Since when did the devil need your help?”

Change is a difficult, often violent process, both for individuals and for whole species. The more rapidly change, the uglier the conflict.

Young Isaac had dreamed of fame.

Young Isaac was an idiot.

Modern fantasy is little more than juvenile escapism and anachronistic longing for a time that never existed. I’ve never understood the appeal.

Do you remember the moment you first realize you were mortal? That no matter what happened, you would never live long enough to read every book you wanted to read? That you’d die having accomplished only a fraction of your goals?

“The biggest liar in the world is They Say,’” I muttered. “Douglas Malloch.”

If books are indeed magic (and does anyone really believe otherwise?), then they are a collaborative magic between author and reader.

Copper River was a small, tightly knit town. If gossip was a competitive sport, we’d have been sending teams to the Olympics and bringing back gold.

The more we narrow the definition of beauty, the more beauty we shut out of our lives.

The behavior of animals does not provide moral justification for human beings to do the same.