“He’s called Kasper. He’s an Italian prisoner. Kasper has been his code name for a long time, his battle name in a life filled with battles. Now his only battle is to stay alive”
“For she’d met with books, she went into them to a magic land far from Echt, out and away and south”
“The best way to help a child through a challenging moment is to give them a story about it, whether they’re being bullied, have fallen in love for the first time, or the tooth-fairy failed to show up”
“The abandoned universe was such a weird place, because even though it had been shut down for ever, there were still lights on inside, as if nothing had changed”
“Mathematics is a world of eternal truths and abstract perfection. Exploring its transcendent beauty can be a spiritual experience”
“If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture—that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.”
“Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox… A boundary-crosser”
“The only visible sign of his power was a woman lying beside him, unmoving, her head resting on his lap, eyes closed, arms hidden under a loose red robe that spread around her, like a flame, on the ash-coloured mat”
“Don't let them make you feel stupid, just because you are happy to play down in the dark with your flashlight. The mystical world depends on you and your tolerance for the absurd. Be strong, my darling ones, and believe!”
“Somewhere in the world there is a magical book. What does this book do? It simply changes itself to become the book you most need at this point in your life”
“There was hardly a door, barely a wall: only a flap of bark, a screen of sticks and mud. There was no need of lock, of door, of wall: this was a prison whose bars were ten thousand miles of water”
“What is the fascination of an island? Why do we experience such a thrill at being surrounded by water, cut off from the rest of mankind, imprisoned on a miniature world”
“I thought about flying, stood sometimes on the edge of the rock and wondered. But much as I’d of liked to, and young as I was, I had the sense to know I’d have to wait for some other way to fly”
“Ungraspable Loki flamed amazement and pleased himself. He was the god of endings. He provided resolutions for stories – if he chose to. The endings he made often led to more problems”
David Eagleman at the School of Life