I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. "Admire me, for I am a metaphor.

I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.

The learnin' mind is the livin' mind, Meronym said, an any sort o'Smart is truesome Smart, old Smart or new high Smart or low.

The rain's innumerable hooves spatter on the streets and roofs.

I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents.

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.