Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thening or nowing.

Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one's person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred - shockingly - with the handle of a fork.

I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!

A surfeit of information often hides an untruth,” he said, with annoying clarity.

Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work - the writer might have died long ago.

I got Oedipus off the incest charge--technicality, of course--he didn't know it was his mother at the time.

I wished I could share my own optimism.