It wasn’t going to be hard…it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I'd done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to.

The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.

If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.' 'I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?' 'True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.

What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?” “I don’t know—avant verrais?

I have a very varied taste in music. Everything from rap to classical to Latino to Rat Pack to jazz.

The Kingdom of Hereford was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age, much to the chagrin of a lot of males, some of whom were still failing to make the grade at thirty-two.

The universe always moves from an ordered state to a disordered one; that a glass may fall to the ground and shatter yet you never see a broken glass reassemble itself and then jump back on the table.