Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.

She introduced herself to my parents with one of her mighty, bunny-crushing handshakes. (I'd never seen Claudia crush a bunny, to be fair, but that's the approximate level of pressure.)

The cast of Hamlet had not moved much. They had that haunted yet hopeful look in their eyes, like the ones you see in photographs of people crammed into steerage compartments, traveling to some new, unknown land.

We learn that many great thinkers were convinced that the Bible contained the Ancient Mysteries, but not in the literal words—that the words on the pages were codes, and that the Bible is comprised of heavy-handed and useless story covering up something much more important and interesting. I get the feeling that [Dan Brown] is trying to tell me something, but I am not biting, reader.

What are you?" I asked. "I'm the Ghost of the Night Before Exams." "And how long did it take you to come up with that?" Jazza asked. "I'm a busy man," he replied.

I ran like a thing that runs.

These houses had been plunked down with an alarming randomness -- unevenly spaced, on crooked lines, like whoever had designed the place had said, "We'll just follow this cat, and wherever he sits down, we'll build something.