Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones...you are invited!

laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.

Life is, of course, terrible.

Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.

Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.

And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.

A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.