Benedict Jacka Quotes

Different moves make different sounds - the steady tread of someone walking, the scrape of shifting feet, the patter of someone in a hurry - and with practice you can learn to filter them, picking out the ones that don't fit in. It's nothing to do with magic, just simple awareness, a primal skill that anyone can learn but which most people in the modern age have forgotten. But anyone who lives as a predator or a prey learns it fast.

As I walked, I started making a list of everyone in the mage world whom I'd opposed, fought with, or otherwise irritated. After I ran out of fingers to count on I decided to limit the number to people I'd pissed off relatively recently.

Russell Square is one of the odder areas of London.

It's so easy to believe that today's going to be the same as yesterday, and most of the time it is the same as yesterday, and so it just goes on, one day after another, blending into a comforting sameness. Until it stops. I

Somehow, though, neither her clothes nor her features seemed to matter - they were the adornments of a painting or a picture, not the real thing. What made her so captivating was something else, not so easily named: the way she moved, the glance of her eyes, the manner and sound and form. All I wanted to do was sit and gape. If I'd let myself fall into her eyes, I think an army of constructs could have battered down the door and I wouldn't have noticed.

As a general rule anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice [ ... ]

I've heard of a guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard",though that's probably a urban legend.

So?' I asked. 'Oh yes, Talis. Well, I didn't kill him, if that's what you're asking. And if I did, I certainly wouldn't have his severed head delivered to Levistus in the middle of their drinks and canapés. That would be wrong. Not to mention quite time-consuming to arrange.

If you can't have another ally," I said at last, "next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.

I've been waiting for this a long time."-Martin "Let me guess that you're wishing for your IQ to break double figures?"- Alex V.

My magic senses danger by seeing the futures in which I'm hurt. As I see the futures in which I'm injured or killed, I change decisions that lead to them. But it's painful. To avoid a future in which I die, I have to experience it. I've learned to shield myself from the psychic shock of those visions, taking only a hazy glance, enough to know hot to avoid that future and no more.

I once read an article which made the argument that modern Western schools have a good deal in common with modern prisons, and I've always thought it was pretty accurate. With both schools and prisons, the ones running the system have a very simple set of priorities for their inmates: they want them to stay on the premises, they want them to stay healthy and watered and fed, and they want them not to be gratuitously violent in a way that'll draw public attention.

It wasn't a passing shower but a steady drumbeat of water, the kind of rain that settles in, puts its feet up and makes it clear that it's not going to leave.

Most people think combat's about attacks and weapons but it's not. It's about movement and information.

Don't want to spend my afternoon picking you off the pavement.

Has anybody ever told you you're a remarkably cynical person?"
"I like to think of it as learning from experience.

If there's one thing all diviners share, it's curiosity. We really can't help it; it's just part of who we are. If you dug out a tunnel somewhere in the wilderness a thousand miles from anywhere and hung a sign on it saying, 'Warning, this leads to the Temple of Horrendous Doom. Do not enter, ever. No, not even then', you'd get back from lunch to find a diviner already inside and two more about to go in.

Come to think about it, that might explain why there are so few of us.

I suppose I should look on the bright side. I might be going to an indictment, but at least it wasn't mine. Yet

Someone who's amoral and selfish can be a threat to you, but they're also a threat to everyone else, and that tends to limit how much time they can spend on you personally. But someone who believes in what he's doing can convince other people that opposing you is the right thing to do. In the long run, that's a lot more dangerous.

Tricking people who want to hurt or manipulate me? Something I'm good at. Getting people to like and trust me? Something I'm bad at.

Starbreeze doesn't rest, doesn't sleep and can hear anything carried on moving air. It'd make her the perfect spy, except that most of what she hears goes in one ear and out the other.
"I'm looking for a Precursor relic, a new one"
"What's a relic?" Starbreeze said curiously.
"A powerful magical thing. It would have been found a week or two ago"
"What's a week?

I'll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I'm seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train's going to come. And after that, another train's going to come. Here, I'll let you guess what's going to happen afterwards. I'll give you a hint - there's a train.

Those of us who do like visitors have to advertise, and it's tricky to find a way of doing it that doesn't make you sound crazy. The majority rely on word of mouth, though younger mages use the Internet. I've even heard of one guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard," though that's probably an urban legend.

I remember reading a book where some pretentious writer claimed there's no moment of enlightenment more terrible than when you realise your parents are simple human beings.

The noise makes your heart jump, but hearing a sniper bullet is a good thing. The bullet outruns the sound wave; if it's on target, it kills you before you ever hear the sound of the shot.