Bartimaeus Quotes

“A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Golem's Eye

“Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Bartimaeus Trilogy Boxed Set

“Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon

“Big don't mean ugly, and thin sho don't mean pretty. If a person wants to be pretty, they gotta walk pretty, talk pretty and act pretty. Can't nobody take pretty from you.”
― Daniel Black, Perfect Peace

“He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

“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 he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Golem's Eye

“Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon

“That's usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle.”
― Jonathan Stroud

“listen, a goad's anything that provokes or incites an enemy
---
let me have a go: cursed deamon! you have met your end! the shivering fire awaits you! i shall spread your vile essance across this hall like... um, like margarine, a very think layer of it...
---
ye-es... im not sure he'll pick up on that analogy. never mind, keep going.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.)”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon

“In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through."
I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry."
"Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes."
"What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?"
"More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon

“The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace's. Now it is yours. Soon it will be Simon Lovelace's again. Take it and enjoy the consequences.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

“I rather think he knew anyway.”
― Jonathan Stroud

“Oh, the boots were on the other eight feet now.”
― Jonathan Stroud

“To my astonishment I saw him standing at a table with Kitty Jones. It was the Kitty Jones bit that was astonishing. Not the table. Though it was very nicely polished.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“When I set out from the boy's attic window, my head was so full of competing plans and complex stratagems that I didn't look where I was going and flew straight into a chimney.

Something symbolic in that. It's what fake freedom does for you.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

“There was a devotion to detail here that could only come with genuine affection, perhaps even with love.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“The mole dug its way deep, deep down, under the foundations of the wall. No magical alarm sounded, though I did hit my head five times on a pebble.
Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want to make that clear. Sometimes you human beings are so dense.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

“The Evasive Cartwheel ™ © etc., Bartimaeus of Uruk, circa. 2800 B.C.E. Often imitated, never surpassed. As famously memorialized in the New Kingdom tomb paintings of Ramses III— you can just see me in the background of The Dedication of the Royal Family before Ra, wheeling out of sight behind the pharaoh.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon

“In my youth, I was always one for the dramatic entrance. Now, in keeping with my character, I gravitate more toward the subtle and refined. Okay, with the occasional feathered serpent thrown in.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Golem's Eye

“I—though forced through lack of space to assume the form of a stoic guinea pig crouched between the girl's shoe and the glove compartment—was my usual dignified self.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Golem's Eye

“Isn't it hard to maintain an argument when you can read each other's mind?”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“The object that was pinning me haplessly to the ground, like a butterfly on a collector's tray, was of twentieth-century origin and of very specific function.
Oh, all right, it was a public lavatory.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“John Mandrake was an attractive young man, and the scent of power hung about him, sweet and intoxicating, like honeysuckle in the evening air.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“Nathaniel's trying to get hold of it right now.
All very well, but could he use—Wait a minute! The radiant features of the boy contorted, slipped out of true, as if the condoling intelligence had drawn back in shock; an instant later they were as perfect as before. Let's get this straight. He told you his name?
Yes. Now—
I like that . . . I like that! He's been giving me gyp for years, simply because I could have spilled the beans, and now he's telling any old broad he meets, free of charge! Who else knows? Faquarl? Nouda? Did he deck his name out in neon lights and parade it round the town? I ask you! And I never told anyone!
You let it slip last time I summoned you.
Well, apart from that.
But you could have told his enemies, couldn't you, Bartimaeus? You'd have found a way to harm him if you'd really wished it. And Nathaniel knows that too, I think. I had a talk with him.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“Thus, those with long and glittering careers (e.g. me) tend to look down on those (e.g. Ascobol) whose names have been unearthed more recently, and haven't amassed so many fine achievements.”
― Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate

“Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled—"
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
"Me? Save you? Please—someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact... it was the girl and her friend. They saved you. Wait—don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy—incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Golem's Eye

“The boy was silent as we went. Unsurprising, this—he had seldom left London in his life before. I guessed him to be gazing about in dumbstruck admiration.
"What an appalling place," he [Nathaniel] said. - Bartimaeus”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Golem's Eye