Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe.

The hardest assumption to challenge is the one you don't even know you are making.

You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!

The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. "Anything else we have to take our chances with.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Life! Don't talk to me about life!

The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.