It was hopeless. She was flawless. She was a sunbeam. Mosca gave up and got on with hating her.

I want my chirfugging goose back!

My dear fellow," he continued more soberly, "If you have managed to complicate things by forming a sentimental attachment in less than a week, then I doubt there is anything I can do for you. You, sir, are a romantic, and I suspect your condition is incurable.

You’re a peach full of poison, you know that?" Mosca snapped back, but could not quite keep a hint of admiration from her tone.

Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.

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.

That," he whispered, "is unthinkable." In Mosca’s experience, such statements generally meant that a thing was perfectly thinkable, but that the speaker did not want to think it.