He was a god of rock. He nearly solved all the world's problems with nothing but power chords and anguished cries into a microphone.

Malina looked incredulous. "Are you anything more than a Druid?" "Of course I am. I own this shop and I play a mean game of chess, and I've been told that I'm a frakkin' Cylon." "What's a frakkin' Cylon?" "I don't know, but it sounds really scary when you say it with a Polish Accent.

People used to say obvious things ironically or as a form of understatement, but in the last few decades they seem to say it with a sense of discovery, and it worries me.

Flidais clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, I bet he nearly shat kine!" That made me laugh - I hadn't heard that expression in a long, long time. I refrained from telling her that the modern expression would be "he had a cow", because I liked the original better. "Yes, the kine he nearly shat would have fed several clans.

-“Say no more,” Leif interrupted. “I understand. I will simply have to kill them all myself.” -"There he goes again. I’m telling you, Danny Elfman would love to get hold of those lines." -"Not John Williams?" -"If you’ve got some hopelessly overmatched heroes fighting evil and some Imperial types marching, John Williams is your guy. You need a song to make people reach for a box of Kleenex, talk to Randy Newman. But if you want creepy atmospherics and spine-shivering chords to back up your casual death threats, you gotta bring in Danny Elfman.

Anyone who's ever tried to tangle with a teddy bear cholla knows there's a whole lot more bear than teddy to it.

But now that she was my apprentice, every such thought caused a guilty twitch in my neck, as if someone had dropped a sleek, stinky ferret there. Guilt ferrets are bastards.