She was plump, with dyed red hair and a face so caked with cosmetics that the floor of the Amazon jungle probably saw more natural light.

Each man dreams his own heaven.

I'm a ghost," said the small figure, then added, a little uncertainly, "Boo?

I don't think," he said, "that a vicar is supposed to beat a bishop to death, or even back to death." Mr. Berkeley looked down upon the remains of Bishop Bernard. "If anyone asks, we'll say he fell over," he said. "Lots of times.

He became merely the broken statue of a beast, now without another's fear to animate it.

She was plump, with dyed red hair and a face so caked with cosmetics that the floor of the Amazon jungle probably saw more natural light.

Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being.