"How does she know it's the right room?' wondered Descant.Oh, I don't know; mabye it's the magical red glow coming from the doorway, or perhaps it's the deafening howl of the temporal winds.' said Mervall. Descant nodded.'You could be right, brother. And don't think I don't know sarcasm when I hear it."

"Well, I don't like the first bit and I don't know the last bit. So I'm really hoping the middle bit is exceptional."

"Ambition had a price, and that price was friendship."

"Sometimes Spiro missed the times when a troublesome worker was thrown out of a high window and that was the end of him. These days, if you threw someone out of a window, they'd phone their lawyer on the way down."

"I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal."

"What's this?' he inquired, none too pleasantly. 'A circus?'No, Julius. It's the end of the circus.'I see. And these are the clowns?'Foaly's head poked through the doorway.'Pardon me for interrupting your extended circus metaphor, but what the hell is that?"

"That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart."

"All we can hope for is that he will fall into the ocean with a bar of soap in his pocket."

"The craft's occupants clutched their armrests, and more than one of them closed their eyes. But not Artemis. He couldn't. There was something morbidly fascinating about flying into an uncharted tunnel at a reckless speed with only a kleptomaniac dwarf's word for what lay at the other end."

"Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know."

"Good. Illegal is always faster."

"Some people just needed to be stolen from."

"If you were me, then I'd be you, and if I were you, then I'd hide somewhere far away."

"Artemis looked at Holly and felt a tremendous affection for her... he could properly appreciate how fierce and beautiful his best friend was...She is truly magical, thought Artemis. Perhaps her qualities are more obvious to me now that I have decided to sacrifice myself."

"Look!' said Foaly, pointing with some urgency into the vast steel-gray gloom, 'Someone who cares!"

"Knock yourself out... Or rather, don't."

"We are different, my friend. We are visionaries. A monkey looks up and sees and banana, and that is as far as he looks. But a visionary looks up and sees the moon."

"How did that go [Butler] asked. 'Your first lengthy conversation with a girl your own age.'Fabulous, said Artemis, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 'We're planning a June wedding."

"A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon."

"Ignorance, as they say, is usually fatal, but sometimes it can be bliss."

"Tonight, history was going to be made. And it wasn't the discovery-of-radium, first-man-on-the-moon happy kind of history. It was the Spanish-Inquisition, here-comes-the-Hindenburg bad kind of history."

"No one's ever really ready for a troll."

"He had seen bigger men than he with mummy's handkerchief clutched in on hand and a bloody dagger in the other."

"I don't suppose you would consider peaceful surrender?"

"Artemis: 'Right, brothers. Onward. Imagine yourself seated at a cafe in Montmartre.'Myles: 'In Paris.'Artemis: 'Yes, Paris. And try as you will, you cannot attract the waiter's attention. What do you do?'Beckett: 'Umm...tell Butler to jump-jump-jump on his head?'Myles: 'I agree with simple-toon.'Artemis: 'No! You simply raise one finger and say clearly 'ici, garcon.'Beckett: 'Itchy what?"

"I'm the crazy girly captain, Remember?"

"Me,' Artemis blurted. 'I'm the nut.'Artemis could have sworn the squid winked at him before bringing the five-ton chunk of spacecraft swinging down toward the morsel of meat in its blue shell.'I'm the nut!' Artemis shouted again, a little hysterically, it must be said."

"Foaly: Anyone see you come in here? Holly: The FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, MI6. Oh, and the EIB. Foaly: The EIB? Holly: (smirking) Everyone in the building."

"Orion nodded, then asked, 'Dwarf cheese?'Cheese made by dwarfs.'Oh, said Orion, relieved. 'They make it. It's not actually . . .'No. What a horrible thought.'Exactly."

"Excuse me, Tex,' the nurse said, hands on hips. 'Would you mind reining in the voice. There are babies being born in this hospital. We wouldn't want the first sound they hear to be your painful howling. There could be lawsuits."

"The humans were protecting their heritage, or so they thought. Strange that Mud Men seem more concerned about the past than the present."

"A genius. A criminal mastermind. A millionaire. And he is only twelve years old."

"Time to do what he did best - plot dastardly acts."

"Today he became a killer, or else a corpse."

"Excuse me, Captain. Are you two going to weep salty tears of admiration over a helmet all night, or do we have matters to discuss?"

"Artemis felt like he was six again and caught hacking the school computers trying to make the test questions harder."

"Humm humm haaa. Rahmumm humm haaaa,' intoned Opal, finishing her chant. 'Peace be inside me, tolerance all around me, forgiveness in my path. Now, Mervall, show me where the filthy human is so that I may feed him his organs."

"A CD. How quaint. We have these in museums."

"You know, Miss Holly, you look very dramatic like that, backlit by the fire. Very attractive, if I may say so. I know you shared a moment passionne with Artemis which he subsequently fouled up with his typical boorish behavior. Let me just throw something out there for you to consider while we're chasing the probe: I share Artemis's passion but not his boorishness. No pressure; just think about it.This was enough to elicit a deafening moment of silence even in the middle of a crisis, which Orion seemed to be blissfully unaffected by."

"Victor Vigny: A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.Conor Broekhart: Which resembles a giant banana."

"No, mademoiselle, I would not like to see the children's menu. I have no doubt that the children's menu itself tastes better than the meals on it. I would like to order A la carte. Or don't you serve fish to minors?"