Benedict Jacka > Quotes

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

“I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I cannot sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.”
― Benedict Jacka, Cursed

“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?”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“If you can’t have another ally,” I said at last, “next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“Has anybody ever told you you’re a remarkably cynical person?”
“I like to think of it as learning from experience.”
― Benedict Jacka, Taken

“Other mages have an odd attitude towards diviners. By the standards of, say, elemental mages. We can't gate, we can't attack, we can't shield, and when it comes to physical action our magic is about as useful as a bicycle in a trampolining contest. But we can see anywhere and learn anything and there's no secret we can't uncover if we try hard enough. So when an elemental mage looks at a diviner, the elemental mage knows he could take him in a straight fight with no more effort that it would take to tie his shoes. On the other hand, the elemental mage also knows that the diviner could find out every one of his most dirty and embarrassing secrets and, should hi feel like it, post copies of them to everyone the elemental mage has ever met. It creates a mixture of uneasiness and contempt that doesn't encourage warm feelings. There's a reason most of my friends aren't mages.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Cursed

“Human beings tend to react better to good-looking people. It’s called the halo effect—someone’s attractive, so you trust them more. It’s natural, which makes it a hard habit to break, but once you start dealing with magical creatures you’d better learn to break it, and fast, because some of the most vicious things out there can make themselves look like absolute angels. Like unicorns. Don’t get me started on unicorns. For some reason everyone has this idealised image of them as beautiful innocent snowflakes. Beautiful, yes. Innocent, no. After you’ve had one of the little bastards try and kebab you, you wise up quick.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Veiled

“As a general rule anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice [...]”
― Benedict Jacka, Cursed

“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”
― Benedict Jacka, Burned

“If you write down someone’s life, do they live for ever?”
― Benedict Jacka, Bound

“Maybe you’ve already guessed by now, and you’re sitting there wondering how I could take so long to figure it out. If you are, all I can say is that it’s a hell of a lot harder to step back and look at the big picture when you have to keep watching your feet for land mines.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I can not sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.”
― Benedict Jacka, Cursed

“Whoever had designed the block of flats had obviously worked to a clear set of priorities. Unfortunately, while cost, size, and low-maintenance had made it to the top of the list, aesthetics, good escape routes, and shelter from gunfire hadn’t.”
― Benedict Jacka, Taken

“Do not mistake my courtesy for weakness.”
― Benedict Jacka, Forged

“I suppose I should look on the bright side. I might be going to an indictment, but at least it wasn’t mine. Yet”
― Benedict Jacka, Veiled

“For years I'd been trying to forget..., locking it up and burying it deep in my memory. The journey... had shattered that, bringing it all back - but now that I'd faced it, I found to my surprise that the fear had been worse than the reality.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Hidden

“Power doesn’t need a purpose:
Power is its own purpose.
It is the only goal that has value in itself,
because it is the means by which all other goals are achieved.”
― Benedict Jacka, Risen

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Hidden

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“Richard is a far worse enemy to me than you will ever be. If I were in a room with you, Richard and a gun with two bullets, I'd shoot Richard twice.”
― Benedict Jacka, Risen

“Reluctantly, she promised to be there and not to try to run away. As soon as I was out of sight, Meredith tried to run away.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fallen

“Congrats, you’ve just had your first assassination attempt.”
― Benedict Jacka, Cursed

“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.”
― Benedict Jacka, Hidden

“I suppose I should be grateful there isn’t any slash fiction. On second thoughts, I’m not going to look too closely just in case there is.”
― Benedict Jacka, Chosen

“It's the things with no price tag that ends up costing you the most.”
― Benedict Jacka, Bound