Self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel about it as Europeans do.

Very few of us are what we seem.

It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.

It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial.

It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.

I have often had occasion to notice how, where a direct question would fail to elicit a response, a false assumption brings instant information in the form of a contradiction.

Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.