“'Metals' has partly been about me regaining my self respect and I feel like I'm growing the muscles I want to grow again.”

“Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.”

“I'm a Canadian. Outside Canada I carry the flag. Canadian nationalism isn't as insidious as American nationalism, though. It's good natured. It's all about maple syrup, not war.”

“'Metals' has partly been about me regaining my self respect and I feel like I'm growing the muscles I want to grow again.”

“There were two things going on: 1) I had already established in my own mind where I wanted to go with the next series, and having James around as a Grey Eminence would have complicated matters. He had had an amazing life and it was time to bid him good-bye.”

“Forgive me, Magnus.’‘I don’t know if I can.’‘You must.’Still looking into the distance, he said, ‘You need my forgiveness?’‘No. I’m dead. You can do nothing for me. You need to forgive me so you can live.”

“In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation.”

“Don't assume the world evolved in the order in which you discovered it.”

“Life is problems. Living is solving problems.”

“Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. “ ‘Small acts partner small houses and small minds'.”

“Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly.”