Magnus Flyte > Quotes

“Only the passionate were immortal, it seemed. If you fought, screwed, screamed, laughed, or otherwise experienced life intensely, for better or worse, you left a record. Those who lived a quiet, well-behaved, well-tempered life? Gone without a trace.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Prague. Praha. The name actually meant “threshold”. Pollina had said the city was a portal between the life of the good and … the other. A city of dark magic, Alessandro had called it.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“What do you know that you’re not telling me?"
"I don’t know what you know, so I don’t know what you don’t know.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Love makes people so stupid.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Sometimes it was just better to blow shit up.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Men were ridiculous, in all cultures and across time.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“History should be studied but not worshipped.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“It wasn't enough to be alive. Everyone needed something to live for.
Or die for.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“The city was in a panic, though a panic in Italy means most people still stand around coffee bars drinking espresso and Prosecco.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Mark Twain said that, outside of Vienna, all coffee was merely liquid poverty," Sarah commented.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Lost Dreams

“Isn’t it funny that only twenty years ago, they were down there cowering in terror that we trigger-happy, decadent, capitalist Americans would go nuclear on them any minute? Little did they know our secret weapon was Starbucks.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“This place was just a pile of old stones. Pretty stones arranged in intriguing ways, but just old stones.
“And outdated wiring,” her father would have added.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Prayer. That was what people did when there was nothing else left to do.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Lost Dreams

“Dig your nails deep enough into the back of a Soviet, and eventually you'll find a Russian.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Sarah felt about great sex the way St. George felt about slaying dragons...”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“...how strange and frightening and intoxicating life could be.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“She hadn’t really counted on having to measure pedagogic dick length with a whole tribe.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Rules of science.” Alessandro shrugged his elegant shoulders. “And what are those? We don’t even know how this works.” He pointed to his head.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Prague is a threshold.”
“A threshold?”
“Yes. Between the life of good and … the other.”
Sarah thought of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I’m not going to have to fight demons, am I?”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Eleanor was all apologies, but Sarah enjoyed seeing a bit more of the Czech countryside. You probably couldn't say that you had really seen a country if all you had seen was a city or two. You had to see where the food was grown, what the riverbanks looked like, and what the highway manners of the inhabitants were.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Charlotte Yates loved humanity with all her heart, but she really had to draw the line at individuals. For the most part they were incredibly stupid, clumsy, selfish, and criminally shortsighted. Look, for instance, at who they voted for.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“You cannot hear the birds for all the gossip.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Lost Dreams

“You see de white gown she wears, richly embroidered, showing de family’s wealth and influence,” said Daphne authoritatively. “De red rose in her hair symbolizes her Spanish ancestry. De prayer book in her left hand to display de Catholic allegiance.”
“What does the dog symbolize?” Sarah asked. Daphne blinked at her for a moment.
“De dog is just a dog,” she said, finally.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Ludwig’s enormous, awe-inspiring genius, his productivity, his prescient modernism were all contained in music. Beside that, the letters to the Immortal Beloved looked no more impressive to her than bathroom stall graffiti: L.V.B. luvs his I.B. Wishes she wuz here.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“They just didn't make them like that anymore. Nowadays she was lucky to get some mild flirtation from some leather-faced NRA lobbyist. Forget about doggy-style on an eighteenth-century canopied bed by a certified KGB agent who said things like “beg for it my little Yankee poodle.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“The cold war was over, but all the little games persisted. It was a good thing those puppets in the Middle East had been too busy grubbing around in their deserts to play any serious role in international espionage ... She took a calming moment to visualize the entire Arab world as a giant parking lot. Lovely.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Served her right, really, having sex in a supply closet of the Boston Hyatt. But George had smelled like oranges and leather and he had bent her over one of those carts housekeeping wheeled around with soaps and shower caps and dry-cleaning request forms. That had been fun, and afterward she had pocketed some shampoo and conditioner.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“Prince! what you are, you are by circumstance and by birth. What I am, I am through myself. Of Princes there have and will be thousands—of Beethovens there is only one.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic

“At Harvard, you could tell if a girl would sleep with you by her poster. Modigliani--si. Klimt--no.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Lost Dreams

“The Nazis had been one thing. The communists were another. But now there were academics crawling all over the palace.”
― Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic