Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.

Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.

Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me.

I've got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable form of narcissus.

Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, O’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next- This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising, Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text. “Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of text- or I swear I’ll wring your neck!