Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while

Everything has to be intrinsic plot-wise in the same way, to use the Linda Williams analogy but to move it on a bit, as musicals - in old musicals, like in an old Cole Porter musical, you get the action, then they do a song, which reflects a moment - everything stops while that is being sung - and then you restart. These days in most musicals, the plot keeps moving through the song. I think it would be nice if someone constructed some pornography where the sex continues to propel you through the story.

My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The thin girl was gulping down one of Richard's bananas in what was, Richard reflected, the least erotic display of banana-eating he had ever seen.

You're sick. Sick and evil and weird.

The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.