I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.

Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.

If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.

The world is like a broken wrist that healed the wrong way, and will never be the same again.

Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

Oh, painted smirk of a hopeless dawn, the girl is still wearing her breeches.

In Mosca’s experience, a ‘long story’ was always a short story someone did not want to tell.