How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph.)
Quote #1
[Merlyn] said you could not use magic in Great Arts, just as it would be unfair to make a great statue by magic. You have to cut it out with a chisel, you see. (S.4.5)
It seems that there's a sort of Code of Magic, similar to the Code of Chivalry. Magic's okay for some things, but you can't be a big fat cheater and use it for everything. Since hawking is considered one of the Great Arts, Merlyn refuses to capture Cully by using his Jedi mind tricks.
Quote #2
"Now the Beast Glatisant, or, as we say in English, the Questing Beast—you may call it either [...] This Beast has the head of a serpent, ah and the body of a libbard, the haunches of a lion, and he is footed like a hart. Wherever this beast goes he makes a noise in his belly as it had been the noise of thirty couple of hounds questing." (S.2.49)
Sounds like something Dr. Victor Frankenstein would dream up as a pet for his monster. The Questing Beast is a magical creature that King Pellinore pursues, to show the ridiculousness and frivolity of some knightly quests.
Quote #3
"Some people say they are the Oldest Ones of All, who lived in England before the Romans came here—before us Saxons, before the Old Ones themselves—and that they have been driven underground. Some say they look like humans, like dwarfs, and others that they look ordinary, and others that they don't look like anything at all, but put on various shapes as the fancy takes them." (S.10.112)
You can't have a good old-fashioned story about the medieval British Isles without adding faeries to the mix! Robin Hood is telling Wart and Kay about Morgan le Fay, whom we find out in the following book is, indeed, one of the Old Ones. She and her sister, Morgause, have inherited an ability to use magic. It's almost a letdown when we see how Morgan uses her vaunted abilities to turn things into… food. Boring.