He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.* *Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit interesting noises, and eventually, once the noises had stopped and the monkeys were no longer doing anything at all—except possibly on an organic level—had needed to be disposed of in the dead of night.

Even if your goose habitually lays golden eggs, it will still be cooked.

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.

It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.

What would be the fun in doing things you know are going to work?

People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.