Ambition is all very well, my lad, but you must cloak it..

One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror..

According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, compo….

Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit..

As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless s….

Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"?….

Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style..

What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?.

He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When s….

The afrit batted his eyelashes with a ostentatious lack of concern. "Indeed? Have you a name?" "A name?" I cried. "I have MANY names! I am Bartimaeus….

That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no differen….

Ah, you coward! Look at you, running." "Actually, it's called improvising..

Much has happened since last we met, Bartimaeus," he went on. "Do you remember how we parted?" "No." I did. "You set light to me, old friend. Struck ….

Did Lovelace's forces find you? Did Jabor break in?" He spoke slowly through clenched teeth. "I went to get a newspaper" This is getting better and b….

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened..

Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style." "That is a footstool..

Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If h….

We grow up being told about great figures in our society, and as you get older you have to question the stories you've been told and decide if these ….

A typical master. Right to the end, he didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgeways. Which is a pity, because at that last moment I’d have liked….

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, e….

And sure enough,the youth in question was not his usual dapper self. His face was puffy, his eyes red and wild; his shirt(distressingly unbuttoned)hu….